


Under the Grinning Moon

by messofthejess



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Canon-Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Infrequent Disturbing Imagery, Pre-Canon, Suggestive Themes, Teen Romance, Teen Years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 20:52:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 36,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9514982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/messofthejess/pseuds/messofthejess
Summary: This is the story of how Kami, Spirit, Marie, and Stein collide.





	1. Enter Death City

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DollyPop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DollyPop/gifts).



> Holy hell, it's finally done. It's here. The pre-canon fic you've all maybe been waiting for but didn't think to ask about, "Under the Grinning Moon."
> 
> Originally, I was going to credit my beta, DollyPop with a co-writing credit, because without her, literally half this fic would not exist, and I mean that. Instead, I decided to gift this fic to her. So this is all for you, Dolly, in all its dumpster fire glory.
> 
> I will update with my artist's piece and more info in the end notes as soon as my fingers feel less like falling off.

**Kami**

            I can feel Death City before I see it. After the dry, cracked expanse of Nevada desert, the large pulse of souls crouching just beyond the darkening horizon feels like a cool drink of water. I’d give anything for some water right now, or for the air conditioning to work in this dilapidated taxi. Twice the driver told me that it’s blowing cool air on his side of the Plexiglas and maybe I should try fiddling with the vents by my feet again. I think he’s lying.

            Instead, I swallow my spit for the umpteenth time and turn back to my book. It’s actually a textbook, _The Beginner’s Guide to Soul Studies,_ but I’ve pored over it so many times this summer that the binding is starting to peel apart in my palms. I couldn’t help myself—finally I had an explanation for the glowing orbs I’d seen hovering in people’s chests since I was five years old. Finally I didn’t have to be the weird girl in the front row who could tell when the troublemakers in the back of the room were planning to act up. There was a place in the world for people like me, where there were _others_ like me. And I would be there soon!

            _A sound soul dwells within a sound mind and a sound body._ I brush a fingertip over the stamped kanji on the cover, repeating the mantra in Japanese in my head. _Kenzen naru tamashii wa, kenzen naru seishin to, kenzen naru nikutai ni yadoru._ I might not be the most physically fit person in the world, but it wasn’t like I was completely out of shape. And I’d like to think being top of my class in junior high meant I had a sound mind. Hopefully my soon-to-be partner would have a sound soul, too. It was kind of a requirement if she was formerly a member of the E.A.T. class.

            Marie Mjolnir. Her first partner was severely injured during one of their missions, forcing them to quit the E.A.T. class and drop back down to N.O.T. Marie, unfortunately, had to follow since she then had no partner, and she had to forfeit all the souls they’d collected. We’re going to show off our combined abilities tomorrow at Presentation Day, where hopefully Shinigami will consider us talented enough to enter E.A.T. together. Which means that I have to unpack my things (I don’t have much, though), organize my desk, get a good eight hours of sleep so I’m rested up, and write Mama a letter to tell her I made it to the DWMA in one piece. Oh, and also have Marie transform and swing her around a few times to see if we’ll even work together as weapon and meister.

            Yup, no pressure. No pressure at all.

            “Hey, kid,” the taxi driver says, sliding the partition open. “We’re almost into the city, and I gotta know where t’ drop you off. You livin’ in the dorms or apartments or what?”

            “Um,” I reply, because I’ve honestly forgotten the name of the building when I’ve practically memorized everything else related to the DWMA. I slide my book off my lap, dig around the inside pocket of my jacket, and pull out a thick wad of folded papers. I flip through them, trying to find the housing information. “Black Terrace?”

            “Mm,” the driver grunts. “Nice dorm. All the boys’ dorms were crappy in comparison to the girls’ places, though. At least that’s how it was when I was at the Academy.”

            “You were at the Academy?”

            “Mmhm. Had a dream of being Death’s right hand man, his Death Scythe. But they stuck me in the N.O.T. class instead. Told me I just needed to learn how t’ manage my powers so I wouldn’t just spring blades out of my hands and cut the hell out of people.”

            “Oh, were you a scythe?”

            “Nah, sickle. Like the farming tool, y’know.” The driver makes a few swipes with one hand, causing the taxi to veer dangerously toward the oncoming lane of traffic. No one has passed by us for a solid hour, but there’s still something to be said for _driving a car with both hands._ Especially when your job is to get people places in one piece!

            “Anyway,” he goes on, “wasn’t all bad. I told myself when I got the news that I really _had_ been destined to be a Death Scythe, but I came up a little short. Geddit? Because a sickle is like a short-handled scythe? _A little short?_ C’mon, that’s hilarious!”

            Yes, I’m positively splitting apart at the seams.

            While the driver slaps the steering wheel and guffaws at his own joke, I turn my attention out the window. Death City was upon us—the cracked highway asphalt turns over to rumbling cobblestones under the tires, making me sit bolt upright in my seat. Darkened white houses crouch on either side of the taxi, boxing us into a narrow alleyway. The atmosphere is somewhere between claustrophobic and cozy, though with the bright yellow windows seeming to multiply the further we wind into the city, I’m leaning more toward cozy. It’s not as blinding as downtown Osaka at night at any rate.

            The alleyway opens up into a wider street, and the houses give way every so often to little restaurants and sleepy storefronts shuttered for the night. We pass by a café with Shinigami’s mask in a green and black circle pasted up in the window: Deathbucks. A long line of students and sleepy-looking adults shuffle in front of the counter despite it being way, way too late for anyone to drink coffee and still think about sleeping tonight.

            “I prefer Uncle Joe’s m’self,” the taxi driver remarks even though I didn’t say anything. “His coffee makes me wanna dance! On the other hand, those Deathbucks girls always look super cute in their uniforms. I like t’ go there whenever I need a little more of a pick-me-up, if you get what I mean.”

            Um, okay. _Why_ would he say something like that when he has a female rider in the back of his taxi, especially a female who’s about the same age as the girls working in the café? He’s officially moved from kinda okay to ultimate creep on my meter.

           We drive in silence for the last few blocks until finally, mercifully, the driver glides up along the curb next to a dorm with scrolling wrought iron on the door. I grab the handle of my suitcase, loop my _backpack_ over one shoulder, and push my way out of the taxi with my free hand, ignoring the driver asking me if I had any other bags. I’m halfway to the front door when I hear him roll down the window and call to me.

           “Hey!” he says. “I just wanted to say that you, uh, you speak really good English for a foreigner, and I hope you have a good time at the Academy.”

           Is he serious? I mean, is he actually serious?

           “ _Baka o okora semasu!_ ” I scream over my shoulder before swinging the door open and stepping inside the lobby, blood boiling in my ears. Death, people could be so stupid. Stupid and insensitive.

             The lobby is empty, save for one boy with dreadlocks on the pay phone, twirling the thick silver cord between his fingers and tapping his sneakered foot impatiently. I scan down the list of buzzers—216, 218, 220. I press the tiny tan button and am greeted by extremely loud crackling from the other end.

            “Hello?” I ask.

            “Hello!” a cheery voice cuts through the static.

            “I’m Kami Yamamoto, your new partner. Um, could you please buzz me upstairs?”

            “OHMYGOODNESSHANGONI’LLBERIGHTDOWN!”

            “That’s not really necess—” I start to say, but I hear static crackling through on the other end again, so I let the buzzer go. The next thing I know, an extremely excited blond girl flies through the door, causing the dreadlocked boy to practically paste himself against the wall in panic. She tackles me in what I assume was supposed to be a friendly hug but feels more like the air is being crushed out of every cell in my body.

           “IT’S SO GOOD TO MEET YOU!” Marie squeals, finally letting me go after what feels like a year and straightening up. “Oh, and you’re here before Presentation Day, too!”

          “That was the p-plan,” I say, gasping for air. “I mean, it’s tomorrow.”

          “Oh, of course! Of course I knew that! Don’t mind me. Sometimes I think I’d forget my own eye if it wasn’t right in my skull!” she giggles. “Anyway, let me help you with your bags!”

           Marie hefts my rather heavy suitcase up with one hand as though it weighs nothing at all and leads the way back up to the door she flew out of. I follow close behind, my _randoseru_ still slung over one shoulder. She fishes a lanyard with tinkling silver keys out of her skirt pocket and unlocks the door with a flourish, holding it open for me and marching up the flight of stairs to the first floor, then the second floor. Students are lounging around the hallways despite it nearly being 10:00, chatting with their doors open and sprawling on the deep red carpet. Marie steps lightly through the maze of legs all the way down to room 220 at the end of the hall and pushes the wooden door open with one hand.

           “Welcome home!” she cheers. “Well, home for now, anyway. It’s not much, but the dorms never were big.”

            I slip inside the room, my feet scuffing on more of the same red carpet. Candles are set up on practically every available surface, every one of them aflame and filling the room with chamomile and lavender. Two twin beds were made up with plain black sheets and thin white coverlets—Marie’s bed has a romance novel on it, turned facedown with pages splayed. Clothes are spilling out of one chest of drawers and the closet Marie is currently rummaging through, muttering under her breath. I slip my shoes and _randoseru_ off at the door and pace across to the cracked-open window. Conversation and laughter drifts up from the street, and liquid shadows of students skitter under the lampposts. It reminds me of home without all the neon and congestion.

            “We could wear the same uniform tomorrow if you want,” Marie says behind me, still tearing through her closet. “I-I went ahead and bought every single one of the DWMA’s uniforms so we could—oh.”

            Her stockinged feet thud lightly across the floor until she stands next to me at the window. She glances outside, a gentle half-smile on her face.

            “I forgot you’re not from here,” she whispers without an ounce of the callousness the taxi driver had. “This must feel so new to you.”

           “It does,” I admit. “But it’s in a good way. Osaka is nothing like this, but the difference…”

            Marie nods, understanding without me having to finish my thought.

            “I just can’t believe the Academy _exists_. For so long, I didn’t even tell my Mama about being able to see souls. I was worried she’d make me take extra classes so my imagination didn’t have time to make up stories.” A low chuckle bubbles out of my throat. “But here I’m not so strange.”

            “Oh, everyone here is a _little_ strange, Kami,” she says with a tilt of her head. I’d known Marie had an eyepatch—we swapped photos through the mail a few weeks earlier—but I didn’t think to ask why. She’d probably think it was a rude question. We weren’t quite strangers, but we weren’t close enough for me to be asking things like that just yet. Speaking of being close…

           “Marie,” I ask, “could you transform for me?”

           “Wha—oh! Of course!” Marie is consumed by a white flash of light, and she reappears again in my outstretched hand as a hammer with a coarse wooden handle, the same lightning bolt emblazoned on one end of the hammer head. Holy Shinigami, is she _heavy._ It takes all my arm strength to swing her around my torso in a rough arc without launching her into the wall. How on Earth are we supposed to take out pre-kishins if I can barely handle her?

          “Guh-uhhhh…Marie, I don’t suppose there is any way you can make yourself any, I dunno, lighter?”

          “I’m afraid not.” She appears in the head of the hammer, bare from the shoulders on up, a bashful smile on her face. “But remember, I don’t think Lord Death is expecting perfection from us. You’re brand new to all of this; he just wants to see what you can do as a meister.”

         “Besides,” she continues, flashing back into her human form and clasping my hand, “you’re tired. I can feel it in your wavelength. You’ve had a long day of travel and you could really use some sleep.”

          She’s right, of course. I hadn’t realized how much strength it was taking just to keep me upright, but all of a sudden exhaustion hits me like a pile of bricks and I have to sit down. I don’t so much sit down on the edge of my bed as flop down, all thoughts of unpacking and writing to Mama scattering out of my head. There would be time tomorrow, plenty of time.

          Unfortunately, my pajamas _are_ on the other side of the room, along with my toothbrush. Marie lends me some of her toothpaste (cinnamon flavor, nice and clean), and I summon enough willpower after a few minutes to shuffle my way down to the common bathroom to clean up. With my hair tied back in a fresh braid, I manage to pull my rumpled uniform out of my suitcase and flop it over my desk chair, the Shinigami skull pin staring goofily up at the ceiling. Hopefully there would be time in the morning to iron it, or at least make it look more presentable.

            With a sigh, I finally collapse into bed. Marie has blown out all the candles except the one right by her bed (a fire hazard if I’ve ever seen one), her one golden eye glinting in the flame. Our beds are facing each other, so she’s looking at me when I settle down on the pillows.

          “You know, you can see the Academy from here,” she says, nodding to the window behind me. “Lord Death keeps the candles lit all the time—I have no idea how, but he does.”

           I roll over to my other side and squint between the slats of the blinds. Off in the distance where Death City rises up into a giant hill, the Academy sprawls in the dark. And yes, I can see what look like balls of fire hovering in midair, but those are the candles, of course. I stare at them for the longest time, thinking how this strange place was now my home. Osaka was thousands of miles and an ocean away, along with everything else I’d ever known. I, the girl who could see souls since she was five, was falling asleep in a room with a girl who could turn into a hammer, in a city where half the students could flash into weapons in a split second.

             Marie’s breathing has become slow and measured behind me. I tuck my arm under my pillow for support and let my eyelids drift closed, slipping off to dreamland.


	2. Presentation Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Spirit talks for the first time.

**Spirit**

Stein isn’t in the lab when I wake up. That’s nothing new—he’s usually up well before I ever am, even on the weekends. I’m not completely sure he sleeps every night when he closes the door to his room. I mean, I don’t hear him jerking off or anything, because that would be expected. Normal. He’s probably growing mushrooms in his closet that he tends to and I’m not supposed to find.

            We’ve been partners for three years now, but I still think he’s _weird._

            I grab a quick shower and spend way longer than I should rifling through my closet looking for something decent to put on. Classes may not start until tomorrow, but today is the day to look good and impress the ladies. They don’t call it Presentation Day for no reason. I end up settling on my black button-down shirt with a white cross on the high, stiff collar, black pants, and dress shoes. Can’t go wrong with a classic, am I right? Thank Death I’d thought to dye my hair again earlier this week.

            Deathbucks has a major line this morning, as was to be expected. Even Master is behind the counter, taking orders and working the espresso machine like clockwork. He gives me the barest glance over his shoulder as I step onto the line, whip out two cups, and start crafting drinks for Stein and me. With anyone else, he’d probably pull a stern face and tell them to knock it off, but I’m one of his most loyal customers. I used to work for him until Stein really started to get serious about collecting souls, though I still pick up a shift every now and then. I even gave him tips when he redesigned the girls’ work uniforms. They’re much, much cuter now!

            “Hi, Spirit!” a high, sweet voice chirps behind me.

            I look over my shoulder to see one of the waitresses in one of those aforementioned cute uniforms, a petite, curvy redhead with striking gray eyes. What was her name again? Erica? Eva? E-Emily? Yeah, Emily sounded right.

            “Heeeey,” I reply, playing it safe with the name thing. The staff rotates practically every week or so, and there are a _lot_ of pretty girls who work here. How was I supposed to keep track?

            “Are you coming to help us out today?” I hear several girls giggling around the corner leading to the kitchen, and a few peek out around the doorway and wave to me.

            “’Fraid not, ladies,” I shrug, taking the metal cup of piping hot milk out from under the steamer and ladling it over the top of Stein’s drink. “Gotta get over to the Academy and check out the new recruits. It’s Presentation Day, you know.”

            “Oh, we wish you could take us with you!” three of the girls in the doorway cry out.

            “I know, I know, and I wish you all could come with me! I’m sure we’d have lots of fun together,” I say with a wink, causing several girls to squeal. “But sadly, you have jobs to do.”

            “And you’re _not_ cutting out on me,” Master rumbles from the register.

            “So I guess I’ll have to catch you ladies later, then.” I snap lids on top of the two drinks, snatch two onion bagels and cream cheese from the bakery case, and slide out from behind the counter, much to the chagrin of some people in line who _actually thought_ I was working on their orders. How silly of them! “Stay looking adorable as ever, okay?”

            “We will, Spirit!”

            I slip out the door of Deathbucks and into the street, where more people are waiting in line. You’d almost think there wasn’t another place in the city to get your coffee and bagel in the morning, which was totally wrong. Deathbucks really _is_ the best, though. Uncle Bob’s Rumba Coffee is fine when you want your stomach to launch into the atmosphere from caffeine, I guess.

            It takes me about twice as long to climb the Academy steps because there are so many other students milling around, and because I’m trying to balance so much in my hands. I finally manage to make it to the top without any mishaps, though, and I head off in the direction of the training grounds. I’ve got a pretty good idea of where Stein might be: up on the balcony above the metal bleachers they set up every year, peering over the railing and down onto the sandy courtyard. He gets a kick out of watching the tryouts but can’t stand to be around our classmates, or at least in large crowds of them. He’s not a social butterfly like I am.

            Sure enough, Stein is sitting right where I said he’d be, leaning over the railing on one arm and twirling a scalpel of all things around in his free hand. Barely anyone else is in the courtyard yet aside from the set-up crew. He casts a sideways glance at me when I walk up to him and cracks the barest hint of a smile.

            “About time you woke up, Spirit.”

            “Hey! I’ll have you know that I’ve been awake—” I awkwardly try to scrape my sleeve up my wrist to check a watch…that I’m not wearing. “Uh—”

            “Judging by your state of dress and grooming as well as the fact that you didn’t make your own breakfast, I’d say at least 45 minutes.”

            “I don’t see you complaining about free coffee,” I grumble, handing Stein’s cup and bagel over to him.

            “Mmm.” He takes a microscopic sip of his coffee, then sits down cross-legged on the concrete and extracts his bagel from the crinkly paper bag. “ _Ah, Zweibelgeschmack. Danke._ You didn’t happen to get lox too while you were out, did you?”

            “Uh, no.”

            “Shame.” With a flourish, Stein uses his scalpel to stab open the tub of cream cheese and spread a little of it on his bagel. When he notices me giving him an odd look over my latte, he merely shrugs. “You forgot a knife. I have to improvise.”

            “Whatever.”

            We dine on our coffee and bagels while the sun continues to stretch over my shoulder. A few of our E.A.T. classmates start filtering in, yawning and patting each other on the back to wake up. Stein stares down at all of them with practiced indifference, but the faraway look in his eyes tells me he’s not actually looking at their bodies. He’s using Soul Perception, checking out each and every one of them despite probably knowing their soul signatures like the back of his hand by now. It kinda pisses me off that I can’t see what he sees unless he’s holding me in weapon form. The world must look much more fascinating from his perspective.

            “There’s a lot of excitement here today,” he mutters. “So many souls eager to see their friends try to join them in class. Must be nice to feel so unbound and optimistic.”

            “Haf th’ twy-out people shown ufp?” I ask through a mouthful of bagel.

            “No, Spirit, they haven’t. And while I realize I’m not one of your dates that you’re trying to impress at dinner, I’d at least appreciate it if you didn’t talk with your mouth full of food.” Stein smirks at me. “So please, Spirit, try to pretend I’m a pretty girl.”

            That makes me nearly spit out my latte that I’d sipped on to choke down the extra bagel, which makes Stein chuckle. More people are shuffling into the stands now, their conversations growing into a steady hum below us. A set-up crew member comes wheeling into the courtyard with an oversized mirror strapped to a dolly, and people start to point and whisper. That’s not any old mirror, but _The_ Mirror. Lord Death can’t leave the Death Room, so he watches all of the tryouts through it and makes his judgments about who can join E.A.T. It was unnerving going in front of him three years ago, even in scythe form, but he’s a pretty encouraging guy. He always lets the ones who didn’t make it down gently and tells them to try again next year, and he’s really enthusiastic when someone does make it. I wonder how many of them will pass this year.

            Stein takes a long pull from his drink and blinks down into the courtyard, where another worker has brought out the legendary burlap dummy. It has a big red splotch painted on its chest to indicate a pre-kishin soul, but the freaky part is the thing actually _has_ a soul. Actually, it’s a soul fragment—Stein told me it came from someone Lord Death reaped a long time ago. The fragment lets the dummy lumber around and swing out at people who try to attack it, but not much else; a complete soul would make the dummy sentient, which would set up a whole other world of trouble. I guess you’re not supposed to actually reap the fragment, although Stein and I managed to do it. All Lord Death has to see you do is not get pulverized into the courtyard wall and make a few good hits, and you’ll usually show you have promise…or something.

            The stands are packed with students now. One of the workers walks over to their mirror, huffs a breath onto the glass, and traces out the numbers with their fingertip. 42-42-564. The glass ripples for a few seconds, then Lord Death pops up, waving his huge hands out to the crowd (seriously, does he wear foam fingers or something?).

            “Hello, hello, everyone! Glad to see ya!” he greets. “We’ve got quite a large turnout today, don’t we?”

            The crowd cheers and stamps their feet in response. Stein merely harrumphs.

            “I think we’ve got a good lineup of folks for the tryouts today. Remember that everyone here is just trying their best—it’s not a competition. That being said, don’t be afraid to hoot and holler if you like what you see! That’s what Presentation Day is all about!” Lord Death bounces around in the mirror frame for a few seconds before settling down again. “Don’t forget, there’s free food and games in the other courtyards, but for now, _let the tryouts begin!_ ”

            More cheering erupts from the crowd. Stein starts twirling his scalpel idly around again while the first weapon and meister pair, a burly-looking boy with square glasses and a skinnier boy with freckles, position themselves on the edge of the sand. Freckles flashes into a whip, and the burly boy grins and takes a crack at the dummy, which immediately springs to life with a grunt.

            “They’re going to fail,” Stein says, sounding almost bored.

            “How can you tell?”

            “Their wavelengths only barely match up with one another. Ironically, it’s the meister who has a weak wavelength, while the weapon has the more powerful one. Unfortunately, being stuck as a whip doesn’t allow him to properly amplify his partner’s wavelength unless he connects with an opponent.” Without skipping a beat, he picks up his coffee cup (how he can still have any left is beyond me) and takes a sip. “Ah, see? There.”

            Burly Boy finally manages to strike the dummy, sending off a flurry of red sparks. The dummy roars and swings out with a clumsy arm, but Burly Boy doesn’t dodge in time to avoid it. He slams hard against the courtyard wall, and a collective gasp rises up from the crowd. Medics immediately rush out onto the sand while Lord Death tells the pair that sadly their attempt just wasn’t good enough. There are times where I think he’s too polite—some of these people really need to hear that their destiny is the N.O.T. class. Not everyone can be eligible for E.A.T. That’s why we’re _exceptional._

            The medics clear Burly Boy and Freckles off the sand in time for another pair to line up and get ready for battle. They manage to last a little longer, but the meister gets her spear stuck in the dummy’s chest, and it’s only because the weapon thinks to transform halfway and push the meister out of the way that she doesn’t get injured. The weapon ends up getting his left leg crushed in the dummy’s fist but only hobbles away with a sprained ankle. Damn, he’s tough. There’s another pair after them, then another, and another. Stein keeps up a running commentary throughout, pointing out the ones that _could_ work together if they put in a little more physical training and the ones who could really do with some of those emotion-heightening candles that Professor Winter keeps in her back office.

            “Maybe _they_ don’t need those candles,” Stein chuckles after a pair goes walking out of the courtyard arguing loudly with each other. They were the closest so far to come to actually resonating, but the dummy managed to swipe the battle axe out of the meister’s hands and knock him out with one solid punch, breaking the resonance. “I think they have a few issues they need to work out first.”

            “Hey,” I say, remembering something. “Where’s Marie?”

            “Hmm?”

            “Marie? Marie Mjolnir? She had to drop out last year because her partner got hurt on a mission. Did she get a new partner?”

            “Mmm. Marie. Was that the blonde from Uppsala you had a major crush on?” Stein asks with a smirk.

            “Up-what?”

            “Uppsala. Fourth largest city in Sweden, it’s Marie’s hometown. Come now, Spirit, please tell me you listened to her talk at least one time instead of staring at her breasts.”

            “I-I didn’t—guh—I—”

            “While she _is_ one of the more developed girls in our class, she does happen to be a rather articulate conversationalist, at least from what I’ve overheard in the hallways. Are you telling me I actually know more about a girl than you?”

            “You’re impossible!” I blurt, color rising to my ears.

            Stein rolls his eyes. “In any case, your prayers have been answered. She’s down there.”

            I scramble to my feet and lean over the balcony railing, squinting into the sunlight. There’s no mistaking the blonde hair and black eyepatch—that’s Marie for sure. She offers a shy wave to the crowd, and they eat it right up. Marie was always one of the more popular E.A.T. students, so it was pretty much seen as a tragedy by everyone when she had to drop out of the program. But rules are rules, and her partner wasn’t exactly going to recover from a rebounded lightning strike that left third-degree burns on half of his body. Marie’s back now, though, and her new meister stands stock-still on the other side of her, a few stray hairs blowing in the breeze. A thick dark brown braid trails down the meister’s back, and her eyes seem to be boring right through the dummy’s chest. Is she reading its soul just like Stein reads everyone else’s?

            “Kami, Marie, whenever you’re ready!” Lord Death chirps from The Mirror.

            The meister (whose name is Kami, I guess) holds her hand out, and Marie flashes into that familiar steel-gray hammer: Mjolnir, the Hammer of God. Now I can see that Kami’s wearing the same black-and-white uniform with the skull pin at the neck that Marie was wearing before she transformed. Oh my Death, they wore matching uniforms _._ That’s absolutely _precious._

            The dummy roars to life, loping towards them like a drugged grizzly bear. Kami twirls Marie around in her hands a few times before diving right between the dummy’s legs and punching up, causing it to stumble and groan. Death, her first move and she goes right for where it hurts? I cross my legs subconsciously, blood rushing in my ears again.

            Kami manages to make a few well-placed punches on the dummy’s back before it can turn around, ducking every time it swings a clumsy arm in her direction. Cute _and_ good at fighting. For a moment it looks like the dummy might knock Marie off into the wall, but Kami executes a damn good backflip away and manages to kick it right under the chin. I clap a hand to my mouth to stop the gasp from slipping out, but Stein hears me.

            “As usual, Spirit, you’re getting too caught up in the superficial,” he says calmly, setting his coffee down and holding out his hand. “Transform, and you’ll see what I mean.”

            I hesitantly flash into a scythe, and it’s like someone put a pair of special glasses on me. Suddenly everyone in the crowd has a tiny glowing ball in their chest that wasn’t there before, a hovering rainbow of colors laid out before me. I look out onto the field and am immediately taken back. Marie’s soul is little more than a crackling ball of gold lightning threatening to burst out of her hammer form, and Kami…where is Kami’s soul? It’s so hard to tell with her dancing around the dummy.

            “Look harder,” Stein answers my question through our resonance. “You might have to squint to see it.”

            Kami digs her heels in and grinds to a halt, her free palm resting on the sand while she catches her breath. Even though she’s partially bent down, I catch a glimpse of a blue sliver hanging in her chest. It’s so _tiny_ —can that really be it? Most other people’s souls are much bigger, more, I dunno, substantial? Not that that’s a problem or anything; she’s still swinging Marie around like nobody’s business, but—

            Wait, what the hell? Is her soul _growing_?

            “It’s the resonance,” Stein contemplates through our connection. “Kami’s soul is remarkably small, but when a weapon starts channeling her wavelength, the soul expands, giving off more of itself and—”

            _KRA-KOOM!_

            A blindingly bright ball of light erupts in Kami’s hand, lighting up the whole courtyard. It’s hard for me to see through the glare, but I think Kami takes the ball and throws it at the hulking silhouette that is the dummy. The ball hits the dummy square in the chest, and massive forks of lightning crack through it, and suddenly there’s nothing but white. Closing my eyes doesn’t help much, nor does putting my arm over my face. I can only imagine what Lord Death must be seeing in his mirror right now.

            Then it all fades just as soon as it came into being. I blink experimentally a few times and look down at the courtyard. Deep scorch marks are burned into the sand, leading right up to a pile of pitiful-looking burlap scraps. Above the pile hovers the soul fragment— _the soul fragment._ They actually reaped it.

            Marie is sitting on the opposite side of the courtyard from Kami, rubbing her head. Holy hell, that’s what happened: Kami must have thrown _Marie_ at the dummy. Mjolnir, the Hammer of God, getting thrown at a burlap dummy designed specifically for students to beat up on. Of _course_ it’d be shredded at this point. Kami is kneeling, her braid half-undone, panting like she’d just finished a marathon. Her eyes are fixed on the soul fragment like she can’t believe it’s actually _there_ , right in front of her, and her whole face is flushed bright red.

            “Well, well, well!” Lord Death’s voice echoes through the courtyard. “I think we could all agree that was some show you put on for us, ladies! Though your resonance techniques are understandably lacking, Kami, your basic combat skills and weapon handling are admirable. And Marie, as always, I am astounded by your raw power.

            “With all that said, _welcome to the E.A.T. class_!”

            The courtyard erupts with clapping and cheers, the crowd on its feet and making tons of noise. All the color has suddenly drained from Kami’s face—she looks like she can hardly believe what’s happening. Marie flies across the field and tackles Kami in a hug, blubbering and thanking her, no doubt, for bringing her back to E.A.T. where she so clearly belongs. Next to me, Stein drops my hand, his head tilted down at the pair to study them. I can practically hear the gears clicking in his head as he tries to figure out what the hell just happened.

            And I? All I can do is stare down at the girl with the dark brown braid, now brushing off her sand-dusted skirt and clinging to Marie in a fierce hug. She’s definitely a force to be reckoned with.


	3. We've Got Class

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Spirit makes a smashing introduction of himself to Kami.

**Kami**

            I still cannot believe I made it into the E.A.T. class. Yesterday was a complete blur after the tryouts: we had to go over to Student Services and switch all of our housing paperwork around since we would no longer be living in the dorms, move all of our stuff out of Black Terrace and into this decidedly much more colorful building with some apartments jutting out from the sides, go on a quick grocery run that turned into a three-hour excursion because _everyone else_ had the same idea to go shopping, and set up our rooms. Then Marie insisted on dragging me to a party that was apparently some tradition in Death City (do all Americans party the night before classes?) and introducing me to practically everyone there. Of course I remember none of their names now.

            So it’s a nasty surprise when it felt like I’d just fallen asleep to hear someone pounding on our apartment door at some godawful hour the next morning. I honestly thought about calling for Marie to have a weapon handy in case someone was trying to break in. But I’d figured out the day before that Marie would sleep through Armageddon if someone let her—it took me a half-hour just to get her to roll over in her sleep. I go to the front door unguarded and open it, a fist balled behind my back just in case.

            A girl with black hair cut in an angled bob stands on the other side, nudging her glasses up her nose with her knuckle. She doesn’t even look up from her clipboard to see who’s answered the door. “Ah, good to see you’re up and awake, Marie. Usually you’re still dead to the world at this hour.”

            “Um…” I hum, because that’s really all my sleep-muddled mind can conjure up for a response at this point.

            The girl finally glances up and lowers her clipboard. “Oh. You’re not Marie. You must be her new partner. Kami, is it?”

            “Um, yes?”

            “Azusa Yumi, E.A.T. class president,” she says, sticking out a hand and leaning the clipboard against her chest. I take her hand and shake it cautiously. “Sorry I didn’t get to see your tryout yesterday, though I heard it was a resounding success. You managed to electrocute the dummy _and_ reap the soul fragment. Impressive.”

            I want to tell her that the whole lightning attack was a fluke—even Marie was surprised by how we’d resonated so highly in the moment without trying—but all that manages to tumble out of my mouth is, “Does the class president always visit other students on the first day of class like this?”

            “Ordinarily, no,” Azusa says, lifting the top sheet on her clipboard and scanning whatever is listed below it. “But Marie has the remarkable ability of getting lost even in completely familiar environments like the Academy, so I usually walk with her to class.”

            That explains why it took us 45 minutes to find the grocery store yesterday.

            “All three of us have the same first class, incidentally. It starts in an hour.” Azusa continues. “Is Marie up yet?”

            “Your knocking woke _me_ up,” I say. “So I doubt it. We were up pretty late last night.”

            “Mm. Mind if I come inside?”

            Azusa brushes past me without waiting for an answer, sets her clipboard on the kitchen counter, and marches right to Marie’s room. I hear the door swing open and shut with a click, then “Senpai. SENPAI. _SENPAI!_ ” followed by something that sounds like a cat being dunked in a bathtub and several loud thumps against the wall. Suddenly the door slams open, and Marie stomps down the hallway to the bathroom, her blond hair looking like she slept outside in a typhoon. Azusa calmly strolls back out to the kitchen, readjusting her glasses on her nose.

            “There. Now we wait,” she says.

            “How long?”

            “Hopefully not too long. I’ll have to kick her ass if she makes us late.” Azusa offers me the tiniest half-smile and leans against the counter. “I’m kidding, of course. Marie could crush me with her thumb.”

            I decide to make the wait less awkward by making tea—it’s what Mama would have done for a guest, even if they did barge into the apartment without asking. Azusa accepts her mug gratefully, and I use the time to triple-check that everything is in my _randoseru_ for class (it’s all there, but it never hurt anyone to be too careful). By the time I’ve drained the last dregs from my mug, Marie comes shuffling out of her bedroom, her visible eye still droopy from sleep.

            “M-m-morning,” she yawns. She squints suspiciously at the measuring cup full of oolong sitting on the counter next to Azusa. “Wazzat?”

            “Tea. Your meister was kind enough to make some for you,” Azusa replies.

            “We only had two mugs, so I had to improvise,” I say, blushing. “We can pick up some more dishes after class if you want.”

            “Mm.” Marie snatches the cup and chugs the still-hot tea down in one long swallow. When she slams the cup back down on the counter, tiny cracks sprout up through the glass on the bottom. Azusa merely raises a thin black eyebrow and goes to rinse her mug out in the sink.

            “Come on,” she commands. “We’ll be late if we don’t get going now.”

            I follow her out the door and Marie follows me, grumbling under her breath about being awake at this hour. The rooftops of Death City are tinged in pink and orange, and some of the streetlamps are still on. We’re not the only ones making the march to the Academy: other students soon join us on the cobblestone streets, some with disposable coffee cups from the nearby cafés and nearly all of them yawning behind their hands. I fidget with my skirt, suddenly self-conscious. Everyone else seems to be dressed in their casual clothes: jeans, sneakers, even hoodies and letterman jackets.  

            “Don’t be nervous,” Azusa says, nodding at my uniform. “It’s nice to finally see someone else who respects school for the academics. You’re in class to learn, not walk the runway.”

            I spare her a glance, noticing how cleanly pressed all of her clothes are—even the white skull pin at the dip of her throat looks polished to a shine. She must have gotten up hours ahead of me to get so ready. “ _Arigato,_ ­Azusa- _senpai_.”

            “ _Mondainai_ , Kami- _kouhai_.” She tilts her head curiously. “You’re from Osaka, right?”

            “ _Hai. Anata mo?_ ”

            “Kyoto.”

            “Ahhhh.” I can’t help but grin—I didn’t expect to meet anyone else from Japan here, but knowing Azusa’s around makes me feel a little more at home, a little more at ease.

            “Are we almost there?” Marie whines, nudging into my shoulder with her head. “I don’t think I can stay upright for much longer.”

            “A few more blocks, _senpai_ ,” Azusa says with a roll of her eyes toward me. “I think you can make it.”

            We round the corner and the Academy awaits us, the candlelight flickering down over at least three dozen stone steps leading up to the red front doors. Marie takes one look at the steps and groans, slumping even more against me, but Azusa shoots her a pointed glance and she straightens up. She sleepily takes my hand as we walk up the steps, stifling a yawn behind her other fist.

            There’s a huge stream of students trying to squeeze in through the doors, and the hallways are even more packed. I clasp Marie’s hand and half-drag her as I follow Azusa, who seems to be able to part the crowd with a few well-placed looks over her glasses. Murmurs ripple through the hallway: I hear some people muttering about the Queen of the Committee Chairman, and a few point at Marie and I trailing behind. My throat suddenly feels a little tight. I mean, I _knew_ we’d probably be the talk of the school for at least a week. I expected it. But I didn’t expect to be outright gawked at—I thought we’d gotten that all out of the way at the party.

            Azusa must sense my anxiety, because she looks over her shoulder and gives me another half-smile again. “Not to worry, _kouhai._ We’re almost there.”

            I can’t do much more than nod back to her, afraid that I won’t be able to do much more than squawk if I open my mouth. There is a hanging wooden sign sticking out from the wall that says ‘Class Full Moon’, and Azusa disappears through the door underneath it. I lunge forward to catch the door before it shuts, making Marie grunt in annoyance when I nearly yank her arm out of her socket.

            We’re inside a large lecture hall like I’ve seen in American movies about college, with a podium for the professor in front of a large chalkboard and row upon row of fold-down seats behind smooth wooden desks. A busty, cheerful-looking woman stands in front of the chalkboard, writing out _Professor Winter, Soul Studies_ in swooping cursive. Azusa is heading down an aisle toward two other students: a girl with dreadlocks bound up in a high ponytail, reading a rather thick book, and a boy in a basketball jersey with his sneakers up on the desk, his sweatband pulled low over his eyebrows and headphones clamped over his ears.

            “Mira. Sid.” I hear her say. “It’s good to see you after a long summer away.”

            “It’s good to see you, too,” Mira grins, looking around Azusa at me. The silver rims of her glasses flash in the overhead light. “And you must be Kami.”

            “ _Hai._ I mean, y-yes,” I bluster.

            “You and Marie were so great at the tryouts yesterday! We couldn’t make it to the after-party, though.” Mira elbows Sid in the ribs. “It wouldn’t kill you to be courteous for five seconds, you know. Say hi!”

            Sid winces and glances up, holding his side where Mira nudged him. He tugs his headphones away from one ear with his other hand and offers me a pained smile. “’Sup?”

            “Um.” English classes really didn’t prepare me for American slang. “Not…much?”

            “Cool, cool.”

            “Sid, don’t be an ass. _She’s new,_ ” Mira hisses at him, but he’s already started nodding along to the music again. She gives me an apologetic look. “He’s not usually like this, I swear. Normally he’d be talking up a storm, but I think Professor Winter,” she sticks a brown thumb down at the woman at the chalkboard, “has got him nervous. Makes him hide in his music.”

            “It’s fine,” I shrug, watching Sid fiddle with his Walkman. Really, it is. Death knows I’d like to have something to occupy my hands to keep my head from buzzing like a wasp’s nest right now, but I don’t. All I can do is plop down in the desk on Azusa’s right—she planted herself right next to Mira and doesn’t look like she plans on budging—and organize my supplies for the thousandth time. Marie is on the other side of me, humming one of those Swedish dance-pop songs she had playing on her boombox last night, or was it early this morning? She’s doodling in the margin of her notebook already, hearts with stitches running through them. Odd, but somehow fitting.

            “All right, students!” Professor Winter claps her hands from behind the podium. Her freckled cheeks stretch wide into a welcoming smile. “For those who need an introduction, I’m Professor Winter, your Soul Studies teacher. This may very well be the most important class you take in the entirety of your DWMA career—that’s why you have it every year. I notice there are some new faces among us today,” she casts a glance in my direction, “but I’ll trust the rest of you will do your best to make them feel welcome. Now, let’s dive right in, shall we?”

 

**Spirit**

            Stein is bored out of his damn mind, I can tell. His soul is barely pulsing as he sits next to me in the highest row of desks, looking down on everyone else. He mentally catalogues everyone that comes in the door, keeps a running tally in the margins of the steno notebook he’s taken to carrying around. But even people-watching—observation, he calls it—can’t excite him right now.

            “Why did you drag me here, Spirit?” he asks me as he makes another three tally marks.

            “We have to attend the first day of class, Stein. Academy policy, remember?”

            “I know all of this already. _You_ know all of this already. Winter teaches essentially the same curriculum every year and simply throws in advanced material every so often to keep the bookworms’ interest piqued.”

            “I know.”

            “Let’s skip, Spirit. I need a cigarette.”

            “You need nothing of the sort,” I scowl. Maybe if I glare hard enough, I can make the pack of those damn cancer sticks in his pocket disintegrate. The worst part is he was the one that swiped them from the convenience store, but he slipped them into _my_ bag in case we got caught. “You look old enough to smoke,” he’d said, staring up at me with those mossy green eyes. “You’re taller.” If he wasn’t so short (and also, you know, my meister), I’d kick his ass.

            “ _Was auch immer du sagst_ ,” he shrugs. He crosses a set of four tally marks with one more to make five, then adds two more to the page. Death, he could act at least somewhat grateful that I pulled him out of the lab this morning. He fell asleep slumped at his lab bench for the umpteenth time, this time a scalpel positioned dangerously close to his nose. His sleeve was pushed up, and I could see a harsh pink line indicating a new incision along his forearm along with sloppy zig-zag stitches. One of these times his hand is gonna slip and he’ll gush blood everywhere, and then I’ll have to hear from Lord Death about how I should have been keeping a closer eye on him, modulating his wavelength so he wouldn’t go cutting himself again…

            Dammit, I can’t babysit Stein all the time. I have a life, too. And I also like to sleep.

            There’s a sudden surge in our resonance, and I look over to see him peering down at who has just come into the classroom. Azusa, Queen of the Committee Chairman, makes a beeline right for Mira and Sid, who’re sitting down in one of the front rows. But that’s not what has his attention. I’d feel annoyance in his wavelength more so than anything; he thinks Azusa is always hot on his trail, looking to rat him out. She’s caught us skipping class more than once and likes to give us hard looks over her librarian glasses, but nothing else has really come of it. She’d be a lot easier to deal with if she didn’t take herself so seriously. And maybe if she undid a few more buttons on her blouse, she wouldn’t look so stiff.

            Kami isn’t far behind, one hand on the shoulder strap of her backpack and the other holding Marie’s hand. Stein’s eyes track the pair of them as they come up behind Azusa, make introductions to Mira and Sid, then sit down. More students file in just before the bell rings, but Stein never breaks contact with the back of Marie’s blond head. His wavelength isn’t so sluggish now.

            Stein claims he doesn’t feel anything other than detached interest in his experiments. Right. And God made the sky blue because he liked the color of my eyes so much.

            “Well, _something’s_ certainly got your attention now,” I tease. “You sure you still want to cut class?”

            “I want to cut something, all right.” Stein turns his head and stares at me with practiced indifference, though I can feel his wavelength alternating wildly from admiration to irritation. “And that something would be _you._ ”

            “Spirit Albarn?” Professor Winter calls out from behind the podium, taking attendance.

            “Here!” I shoot up my hand, then turn back to Stein. “You wouldn’t _dare_ ,” I hiss at him.

            He just rolls his eyes and goes back to his notebook, turning the tally marks from earlier into stitches. I suppose that’s meant to be some kind of threat to me, but I ignore it and watch the rest of my classmates raise their hands and announce their presence. Why would it be so catastrophic if Stein had a schoolboy crush? Honestly, a little romance in his life wouldn’t kill him, and he could do far, far worse than Marie Mjolnir. Half the school has a crush on her—probably better than half, because I’m sure there are some girls who wouldn’t mind getting with that.

            “I bet that eyepatch isn’t the only thing you wanna get under,” I mutter under my breath loud enough for him for him to hear.

            I’m an idiot. I’m an idiot because I expect to say dumb things like that and not face any consequences. I’m an idiot because I only see the barest flash of silver flick out of Stein’s coat pocket and I shriek and leap for my life instead of maybe possibly defending myself. I take a header over the desks and tumble down, down, down over the rows, causing other students to scream and curse, pencils and pens flying everywhere. Finally, I crash to a halt on one of the bottom rows, head spinning and back throbbing.

            “Mr. Albarn, _is there a problem?_ ” I hear Professor Winter ask pointedly from somewhere around me. For all I know, she could be hanging from the ceiling.

            I close my eyes and wish for the world to stop whirling around so fast, pressing down on my temples. When I open them again, I’m looking up at a pair of deep brown, almond-shaped eyes peering down at me. They blink, and a slender hand reaches up to brush a few hairs out of the way.

            “You’re on my desk,” a voice says dryly. It takes me a moment to connect the voice to the eyes, and the eyes to the face, and oh sweet Death, I’ve landed in front of Kami. I am literally inches away from being in her lap.

            “Heh,” is the only coherent noise that comes out of my mouth, because as it’s been established, I’m an idiot.

            “Mr. Albarn. Mr. Stein,” Professor Winter says sharply. “I would have expected better behavior from the two of you being top students at the Academy, but apparently that expectation was misplaced. So, to the Death Room with you. _Now._ ”

            “Come on, Spirit,” Stein calls from somewhere by my feet. He’s already marched his way down from the top row, his messenger bag slung over one shoulder and my bag over the other, looking every bit the innocent student. “Let’s go.”

            I’m still a little frazzled from the tumble—and also because Professor Winter usually treats me like her son, so her being sharp is so strange—so it takes me a good minute to get my bearings and hoist myself off of the desk. Kami lets out an annoyed grunt as she shuffles her stuff back into place in front of her, but I swear I catch the smallest smile dancing on her lips and her eyes watching me as I awkwardly scramble out the door.


	4. First Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a badly broken nose and a first reaping give this chapter's title a double meaning.

**Kami**

            _You wanna try a mission?_ Marie passes a note to me in English Lit during our fourth week of classes. I’m really not sure where the time has gone, but between all of our classes, homework practically every night, and training in the forest on the off-days when we don’t have gym, we’re already into October. I’ve just now gotten to where swinging Marie around doesn’t make my shoulders ache after ten minutes, though sometimes I still wake up sore.

            _Do you think we’re ready?_ I write on the folded slip of paper and pass it back to her. I’ve wanted to get going on collecting souls, really, but I’ve been waiting for Marie to make the first move. Other than things Azusa has told me in passing, I don’t really know the circumstances of how her old partner got injured on a mission, or whether Marie herself got hurt. I sort of assumed that’s how she got her eyepatch, but out of respect I haven’t asked any prodding questions. We’re still getting used to each other, after all.

            _If you want, we can take a joint mission_ , she jots down. _We’ll just need to find another pair who wants to come with us. I’m sure Nygus and Sid wouldn’t mind._

_Who’s Nygus?_

Marie giggles behind her hand. _Whoops! I forgot to tell you: Nygus is Mira’s last name. We call her that because it’s really easy to mix my name up with hers._

_I see. I suppose that can’t hurt._

_Great! We’ll go look at the bulletin after class._

            I’m about to scribble down another note, but Professor Archer gives me a rather cross look. I slip the paper in the back of my copy of _Twelfth Night_ and pretend I’m studying the dialogue between Viola and Orsino very closely. My English is good, yet Shakespeare still gives me a headache to read. Thank God for footnotes and notes in the margins, and Marie helping me on the nights where I really struggle through it.

            We walk out of English Lit together and through the winding hallways toward the mission bulletin. Azusa gave me a walking tour of the DWMA campus one afternoon so I could guide Marie around without the both of us getting lost; she even gave me a hand-drawn map that I keep in my jacket pocket. Aside from the one day last week where we stumbled around the basement dungeons for an hour because I accidentally had the map turned upside down, we’ve been able to keep out of places we shouldn’t be.

            There’s a surprisingly big crowd huddled around the bulletin for this time of day. A student in a pressed white shirt is teetering on a ladder, hanging shiny black cards down one column of pegs on the wall and taking off others. Marie tries to jump above the sea of heads to see what’s going on, but even with her white high-heeled boots that she’s so proud of (her mama sent them to her from Sweden last year), she can’t see what’s going on. Frustrated, she drops down with a huff.

            “Grr! Why is everyone so tall?” she grumbles.

            “I’d be more than happy to give you a boost up, Marie,” a boy speaks up from the other side of her. Already I don’t like the sound of his voice—it’s slippery like rotting seaweed. “But I’m afraid I’d have to get between your legs to do it.”

            What happens next is such a blur. Marie whips around fast to her right, a blond tornado, lashing out a fist and a snarl on her lips. There’s a flash of ruby red and the sickening crunch of cartilage, followed by a loud thud of a body against the wall. More red, and this time it’s flowing everywhere: blood. Marie’s snarl turns into a scream. The crowd turns toward the commotion with curious eyes.

            “STEINI’MSOSOSOSOSOSORRY!” she gushes, tears brimming in her eye. “I didn’t mean to hit you! I was aiming for that pervert Spirit and he ducked!”

            The boy she called Stein is little more than a crumpled ball against the wall, his thin, pale hands clamped over his nose to stem the flow of blood. Some of it has spattered onto the lapel of his coat, which I notice has jagged stitching all over it like the teddy bear I’ve seen sitting on Marie’s bed. His odd, silver hair hangs over his face with his head tipped forward, but he’s looking up at Marie with deep green eyes almost…laughingly. Like he thinks all of this is a sick joke he finds extremely amusing.

            Nygus materializes from the crowd, with a first aid kit of all things. She kneels down next to Stein and tugs his hands away from his face to inspect the damage. I turn my attention toward the boy Marie called Spirit and find it’s the same obnoxious boy that crash-landed on my desk nearly a month ago in Soul Studies. It’s like all the color has drained out of his face and into his hair as his eyes flick back and forth between a hysterical Marie, who looks like she still wants to punch something, and Stein and Nygus on the floor. His gaze soon lands on me. My stomach roils, because what kind of idiot just walks up to someone and says something so lewd? Obviously the same kind of idiot who leaves his eyebrows faint blond when he dyes the rest of his hair so his face looks constantly blank.

            “You should probably get the nurse,” Nygus says over her shoulder to no one in particular. I seize the opportunity to bolt away from the situation, because this is getting to be a bit much for me to handle. As I run down the hall in what I hope is the general direction of the nurse’s office, I can’t help but feel that pale boy’s eyes boring into my back before I round the corner.

 

**Marie**

            Oh my God, I hit Stein. Oh my _God_. I cannot possibly be more humiliated.

            All I wanted was to hit Spirit in his dumb face. He’s made gross comments to me before, and to other girls, too. I dunno what it was about today that made me finally snap, but I did. And oh my God, now Stein is…he’s…

            He’s _looking_ at me? And he’s laughing?

            I mean, he doesn’t do much other than gurgle, thanks to the towel Nygus pulled from her first aid kit to stop the bleeding, but I can tell by how his shoulders lurch that he’s trying to laugh. His eyes sparkle, not just from tears of pain. Have they always been that deep green, like pine trees?

            _Marie, get a grip! You just punched the boy in the face and probably made his nose crooked for life!_

            Kami’s come back with the nurse already; the crowd parts to let them through. Spirit shrinks to little more than a shadow in the corner of my eye. I think about raising my fist again, to let him know that I intend to finish what I started, but I keep it balled tight in my skirt pocket and rub my other arm over my eye to dry it. My mascara is surely smudged now. 

            “Who’s responsible?” the nurse asks.

            “I-I—” I start to say.

            “Spirit is,” Nygus quietly cuts across me.

            “ _What?!_ ” Spirit shrieks from somewhere behind me.

            “He provoked Marie and then ducked. Made a perverted comment. She caught Stein by mistake. It was an accident.”

            “Is this true?” The nurse looks up at me with soft gray eyes. I can’t help but notice they’re almost the same color as Stein’s hair, and there I am back thinking about him. Azusa was right. I really am hopeless.

            “Y-yes,” I manage to squeak out.

            “Spirit, report to the Death Room immediately. Stein, I’m afraid you’re coming with me to the infirmary until the bleeding stops. Marie, your hand?”

            It takes me a second to register that the nurse is talking to me (damn him and his eyes), but I pull my fist out of my pocket and have her take a look. She turns it over in her hand, asks me to put it flat, peers at the knuckles.

            “No broken bones,” she pronounces, “but ice will keep any swelling down. And I believe the rest of you have classes, yes?”

            The crowd suddenly wakes up as if they’d been put under a spell, and the hallway starts teeming with motion again. The nurse tugs Stein to his feet and shuffles him off to the infirmary. He gives me a quick look over his shoulder before they turn the corner. Does he wink at me? I swear he winks at me. Then again, my depth perception is really off now that I have only one eye.

            My heart skips several beats. Death, I have a problem.

            “That was really cool of you, Nygus,” Kami says, bending down to help her put her first-aid kit back together. “Sticking up for Marie like that.”

            Nygus shrugs, the shoulders of her blazer scrunching up. “It’s the truth. Besides, I wouldn’t pass up the chance to get Spirit Albarn into trouble. The boy’s a creep.”

            “Mm. Hey, Marie and I wanted to ask you something.”

            “Huh?” I snap out of my thoughts.

            “Remember?” Kami turns to me. “The mission?”

            “Oh right, right! Nygus, I know it’s kind of a weird thing to ask with what just happened, but would you like to go on a mission with us? You and Sid, I mean.”

            “Hmm,” Nygus hums. “Yeah. Yes, let’s do it. We haven’t gone on any missions yet this year, and I’d really like to see you do that lightning attack again.” Her bright blue eyes twinkle. “That was the best part of Presentation Day, to be honest.”

            “Oh, thank you!” Kami skips over to the bulletin and scans over the black cards with eager eyes. “This is gonna be great!”

            “Yes, it will be.” Nygus gives me a pointed look. “But not tonight. Marie’s hand needs ice first.”

            I give Nygus my best puppy-dog eyes/pout combo, but it doesn’t sway her. Damn.

 

**Kami**

            Nygus spends the night in our apartment, working with us through algebra problem sets and reading through more of _Twelfth Night._ She does really good voices for the other characters, which helps me understand what’s going on a little better. Marie sits at the table with a bag of frozen peas draped over her knuckles, still fuming. I’m pretty sure the next time she sees Spirit she’s going to kick him in the balls instead. I really can’t blame her.

            Azusa knocks on our front door bright and early the next morning, and seems to breathe a sigh of relief when she sees Nygus in the apartment with us. I notice on the way to class that their hands keep brushing up against one another, with neither one seeming to want to pull away. At one time they link pinkies and hold them like that for a few blocks, and I have to stifle a squeal. It’s just so _cute._

            We leave class early that afternoon with Sid and go to mission claims for our travel information. We’re headed off to Minneapolis, where a pre-kishin has been lurking around the famous sculpture garden. It doesn’t seem to be super strong according to Shinigami, but it’s evaded several other weapon/meister pairs who have gone after it solo. Hence the option to do a joint mission. A soul is a soul, after all.

            It’s an endless chain of taxis to get to the Las Vegas airport and out to Minneapolis from the airport there, but all we have to do is mention Shinigami’s name and the meter magically gets switched off. Marie explains in hushed whispers that the state governments pay dues to the Academy for the service of being protected from the evils of the world.

            “So we’re fancy security guards,” I mutter in the backseat of the taxi that finally promises to take us to the sculpture garden.

            “Pretty much,” Marie shrugs.

            The stars have started peeking out around the skyline by the time we glide up to the garden. I thank the taxi driver—he wasn’t nearly as irritating as the man who drove me to Death City—and the four of us pile out onto the dewy grass and march into the night. A cool breeze picks at the hem of my skirt, and I’m thankful I chose to wear stockings. The woman working at mission claims warned us Minnesota had a blizzard just last year on Halloween night; the place was known for unpredictable weather.

            “Should you transform?” I ask Marie, who’s smoothing at the front of her jacket.

            “Ooh, yes. Probably not a bad idea.” She flashes into her hammer form, and my arm sags at first with the weight of her, then re-adjusts. Sid holds his hand out to Nygus, who transforms into a small but rather lethal-looking knife.

            “You’re a knife meister?” I ask Sid.

            “Mmhm,” he nods with a grin. “There’s a couple others back at the Academy, but we’re the top-ranked pair.”

            Nygus appears in the side of the blade and rolls her eyes. “He’s so modest. Can’t you tell?”

            “Completely,” I smirk. The smirk gets wiped off my face in an instant, though, because I hear a _whoosh_ in the trees behind us. I’m instantly on guard, my head on a swivel.

            “Keep watch, Sid,” I say. “I’m going to try to use Soul Perception, okay?”

            Sid grunts next to me. I close my eyes and feel out our souls: Marie in my palm—hers is yellow and bright and so _warm_. Sid a glowing soft green, Nygus a calming blue. Everything beyond about twenty feet in front of us turns into a dark blur. Yet I can still feel something pulsing on the outer edge, just where I can’t see, like hearing water drip from a faucet and not knowing whether it’s in the kitchen or the bathroom. I try to push my sight out further, squinting in my mind’s eye to do so.

            Marie screams, and I barely have time to duck before razor-sharp claws lash out toward my face. Sid hits the ground and rolls off to the side, brandishing Nygus. With a roar, he lunges toward the claws and swipes. A gush of dark blood spurts out and stains the grass—Sid managed to catch this monstrosity on the leg. Or at least I think it’s the leg.

            “ _That’s_ a pre-kishin?” I yell.

            “What did you think they looked like?!” Marie yells back. “Dodge!”

            It’s my turn to hit the ground and roll, and I end up on my back, staring up at a gaping, drooling mouth full of nasty, mangled teeth. None of my textbooks have diagrams of pre-kishins, so of course I’m shocked. All _The Beginner’s Guide to Soul Studies_ told me was they get more distorted the more innocent souls they consume, which I suppose means they could look like anything. Mismatched limbs. Bloodshot eyes that focus on nothing and everything at the same time. Skin that shifts between jagged scales and undulating flesh with no rhyme or reason. Claws like chainsaws.

            Crap, I’m scared.

           But that thought only lingers for a second, because I don’t have _time_ to be scared. The blood pounding in my ears becomes a drumbeat that lurches me off my back and onto my feet again, trying to figure out the next plan of attack. Sid is up on the pre-kishin’s back, Nygus stuck between two patches of scales. The pre-kishin bucks, and Sid goes flying with such a hard thud to the earth that I hope he can get back up again. With its primary nuisance taken care of, the creature wheels around on me, jaws open.

           “ _Don’t you look delicious_ ,” it snarls at me. I snarl right back and smack it right in its seedy chest with Marie. Sparks fly on contact, but the pre-k doesn’t seem too perturbed. If anything, it seems encouraged to step close, drool puddling on the ground. Gross.

           “Hey, Marie?” I ask the hammer in my hand. “You’re still with me, right?”

           “Uhhh…yeah, yeah, I’m here!” She sounds like she’s practically frozen in fear, like she’d be curled in a ball if she were human. “Do you have a plan?”

            I falter for just a moment before I clear my throat. “We need to get swallowed.”

            “What?!”

            “No, listen!” I protest as the pre-k comes closer. Sid gets back to his feet on the grass, while Nygus, having partly transformed back to her human self, continues stabbing the creature in the back with her knife-hand to no avail. “We’ll get inside that thing, then resonate so it blows to pieces. Got it?”

            “Why—”

            “Marie, there’s no way I can’t get close enough to land a hit that’ll hurt. Stabbing it isn’t working. Hitting it with you isn’t working. We have to go inside!”

            “But—”

            “This isn’t a dummy I can throw you at! We can’t lose each other!”

            Silence on the other end, then—

            “Okay.”

 

**Marie**

            I have to trust Kami. She’s my meister, and this is her first time doing this, but she is my meister and I have to trust her.

            _She’s not Joe,_ I tell myself as the jaws open above us and the teeth become our cage. _She’s not Joe. She won’t get shocked. He didn’t know how to handle you, and that’s how he got hurt. Remember what Mama has told you: only the worthy can wield the Hammer of God. Joe wasn’t worthy._

But is Kami?

            I have no time to answer that question. Pre-k slobber is so _gross,_ and we’re both coated in it as we slide up against its tongue. I hear the throat hiccupping like it’s trying to swallow, but it can’t. Thank God. I wasn’t looking forward to going down into the stomach or whatever other torture was waiting for us.

            “Marie?” Kami whispers, clutching me close to her chest. I can feel her soul reaching out for mine: not tentative like Joe or the others, but with as much calm as she can muster. I don’t want to shock her. I don’t want to make her heart literally burst out of her chest from the electricity and watch her twitch on the grass, charred to the roots—

            _Only the worthy can wield the Hammer of God._

I take a breath and reach for her. Our souls meet halfway; something clicks. It doesn’t feel as hot as the first time, but still bright. The sparks dance across Kami’s cheekbones like fireflies, and I can almost forget we’re inside the mouth of a monster. We could be under fairy lights at a party on a summer’s night or somewhere equally pleasant. Her smile curves up her cheeks like a child about to blow out their birthday candles and make a big wish.

            Maybe she does make a wish, because she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath before she punches up with me in her hand, yelling. Lightning rips through the pre-k like it’s tissue paper, but she doesn’t let go of me. Last time it was because she was surprised. This time, she holds on because she’s worthy.

            _Only the worthy can wield the Hammer of God._

I’m glowing, and she’s glowing, and I’m pretty sure the whole city can see what’s going on in their sculpture garden. Sid is sitting on the grass dumbfounded (he does that a lot). Nygus is next to him, the brightness and shock of everything reflected in her blue eyes. We must have been floating, because Kami’s feet touch the earth and I drop out of her hand and into human form again.

            A veiny red orb hovers in the air between us: the pre-kishin’s soul. Kami tugs the hair tie out of her braid and ruffles her hair free, her eyes not leaving the soul.

            “It’s sort of pretty,” she mumbles. I keep forgetting she’s new to all this.

            “Do I really need to eat it?” I sigh.

            “Sorry, I forgot to pack my fold-up takeout containers for this trip.”

            I giggle and snatch the soul out of the air. Experience tells me that swallowing them whole is the best way to go, but it doesn’t make actually doing it any easier. It still feels like a wad of overcooked spinach bobbing down my throat to me. Is there anyone out there that really likes eating souls?

            Kami’s smiling at me again. “One down. Ninety-nine more to go.”

            All I can think right now is _she is worthy. She is worthy. She is **worthy.**_


	5. Just A Slice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stein is a disturbing little shit, AKA completely in character.

**Stein**

            This was almost too easy. The pre-kishin practically wrecked itself on Spirit’s blade as it tried to claw out of the alley we’d cornered it in to get back out to the street. Now we stand in a puddle of its dark blue blood, its soul hanging in the air in front of us.

            “Can I eat this one?” Spirit asks.

            “Yes. This one didn’t catch my interest for experimentation,” I reply, tapping my pocket for a pack of cigarettes.

            Spirit snatches the soul out of the air and gulps it down like a man starved, his throat bobbing. He probably is starved, come to think of it—it’s almost 7:30, and we haven’t had anything for dinner.  We have approximately an hour before we need to get back to the airport, so we wander back out onto the glimmering Las Vegas Strip in search of a restaurant that won’t send Lord Death into heart palpitations when he sees the bill.

            No such luck. The steakhouse Spirit picks out makes the platinum credit card in my inner jacket pocket burn as soon as we step through the door and he winks at the hostess, who gives us a once-over because we look far, far too young to be frequenting an establishment like this. My all-white attire next to Spirit’s jet-black suit can’t be helping matters, either. But one flash of the credit card (embossed with Lord Death’s mask, of course) gets us seated at a quiet booth with cool, tall glasses of iced tea with no questions asked.

            “I doubt you were going to charm her into giving you alcohol, Spirit,” I say, pulling a glass toward me and sipping. Perfect amount of lemon, just enough sweetness. My weapon did know how to pick a place.

            “Are you sure? She winked at me. I’m pretty sure she winked at me.”

            “Her bangs were covering one eye. She was most likely blinking.”

            “I’m sure you know all about one-eyed girls who ambiguously wink-blink at you,” Spirit chuckles.

            I ignore the obvious implication of his words and drink, willing the blood out of my ears. Our waitress picks that moment to show up to our table, pad of paper and pen at the ready. I order a rib eye dinner without hesitation, not really caring to be kosher tonight. Spirit orders the same, plus one of those ridiculous blooming onions for an appetizer. He doesn’t succeed in swapping his iced tea for one of the Long Island variety, but he does negotiate his way to a Coke, which he seems more satisfied with.

            “You should really consider preserving your liver until you’re at least legal age, you know,” I say, stirring the ice in my glass with my straw.

            “What’s the point in that?” The worst part is Spirit tilts his head at me in what could only be genuine bewilderment. “Who knows what condition my body will be in when I’m twenty-one?”

            “Indeed.”

            “My metabolism could slow down. My life could be so busy that I can’t sit down to have a drink—”

            “You could be dead,” I offer.

            Spirit splutters at me over his Coke that’s just arrived at the table. “Why you gotta be like that, Stein, huh? Why you gotta take the morbid route?”

            “It’s the pragmatic route. We could all die at any time. And your future occupation as a Death Scythe has a historically high mortality rate.”

            “Mm, right,” he says, settling back into the crushed velvet cushions of the booth. “How many souls are we up to now?”

            “I’d assume since _you_ were the one eating them that you’d be keeping track.” When Spirit does nothing but blink at me, I smirk at him over my glass. “That was number 27 tonight.”

            “Wow, over a quarter of the way there. By this rate, I’ll be a Death Scythe by the time I’m seventeen!”

            “That’s the goal,” I say. There really isn’t a goal, or a timetable we’re being held to. It would just be nice to think I could make him a Death Scythe in time for me to have a relatively unfettered final year at the Academy. One where I’m not obligated to check in with Lord Death every time I so much as sneeze in the wrong direction, and Spirit isn’t kept chained to the door of Patchwork Labs as my personal guard dog. It’s almost humorous, really: Spirit is supposed to protect me from _myself._ There’s no big bad wolf coming to blow my house down. The wolf is already in the house, and that wolf is me, eager to slash everyone and everything around me to ribbons. Or so that’s what Lord Death thinks. He may think he’s being clever, hiding his motivations. Encouraging me to live in an abandoned building outside town. Purposely pairing Spirit and me together instead of forcing us through the gamut of icebreakers and feeling games everyone else is subjected to. Inviting me to tea every week.

            I already know I’m a monster. I don’t need the reminders.

            The blooming onion makes its way to the table, and I let Spirit have at it, watching him tear straw after straw of fried onion from the bunch and pile them on his plate, along with an inordinate amount of marinara sauce. He’s about six straws in when he looks up and realizes my plate is empty.

            “You can have some if you want,” he says after swallowing a mouthful of hot onion and breading.

            “No thanks. That’s all for you.”

            “You sure?”

            “Positive.” I don’t even get my drink back up to my mouth before he starts chowing down again. The blooming onion buys me a few minutes of blissful quiet, save for the low background hum of noise typical in most restaurants and Spirit munching. Our entrees arrive shortly thereafter, and apparently so does Spirit’s appetite for conversation, because he pipes up just as I’m cutting into my ribeye.

            “I mean, where we’re at is good, ‘cause Kami and Marie are closing in on us pretty fast,” he says, hacking apart his baked potato.

            “Beg your pardon?” I say, my knife clattering to the table.

            “Yeah. I think they’re at, like…21? 22?”

            “Class has only been in session for a little over two months.”

            “I know! That’s why it’s super impressive!”

            “They must be going out on missions at least three times a week.”

            “Something like that, yeah,” Spirit takes a sip of Coke.

            “Do you think that or do you know that?”

            “Look, if you wanna spy on itsy bitsy Marie Mjolnir, you’re gonna have to do that yourself. I have my eye on someone else.”

            He’s baiting me, waiting for me to ask who the ‘someone else’ is, when I honestly couldn’t care less. So long as he can keep his eyes off of girls long enough to study for exams and work through missions, what Spirit does on his own gallivanting time is none of my business. I’m also pointedly ignoring his continued insinuations about Marie. Honestly, where he gets these ideas is beyond me. My interest in Marie is of the platonic variety, nothing more. She holds no more of my attention than any of our other classmates.

            That’s not entirely true. She holds a slightly higher percentage of my attention, though I can’t fathom why. She does cause a rather odd psychosomatic reaction wherein my heartbeat skips and an unnecessary amount of blood pounds in my ears. I really should test myself for cardiac arrhythmia one of these days.

            Still, for Marie and her partner to gain so much ground so quickly is unprecedented, to say the least. Kami Yamamoto is largely an unknown factor, and it’s been difficult for me to perceive her soul completely. Its size is nothing to write home about, but the way it flares up when in resonance with Marie is unusual. Almost like fire. If only I could get closer for experimentation…

Ah, but I shouldn’t. Why would I when I have a perfectly good specimen already?

            Spirit mercifully throws himself completely into eating, leaving me in relative peace. I slice the ribeye thin, the steak knife as my makeshift scalpel. A good surgeon should never pass up the opportunity to practice his cuts. Father wants me to go into pediatrics, like he did, but I’d prefer to know my patients a little more intimately. I like the feel of life in my hand: the pulse, the blood of it. Far more engrossing than tapping rubber mallets on chubby knees and telling children to turn their head and cough.

            The waitress gives us a dubious look when I slip the credit card into her order book, but she hands me the receipt nonetheless for me to scribble my signature. We step outside the steakhouse and spend about ten minutes trying to hail a taxi since we’re practically invisible among the swarm of tourists on the Strip in loud print shirts and oversized sunglasses. Finally, Spirit manages to flag one down, and it’s a brief ride to the airport. Lord Death’s private jet awaits us on a separate strip of tarmac, so all that’s left to do is climb into the cabin and settle in for the trip home.

            Spirit _must_ have stashed alcohol in the mini-fridge when we were on the way to the mission, because one doesn’t ordinarily look so happy when they’re swilling mouthwash. It’s only the little bottles that he must have taken from some hotel or another when we were on a previous mission, but still enough for him to get an insipid grin on his face and whine “Stein. Steiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin,” at me to get my attention. When he tires of that, he resigns himself to drumming idly on the armrests, staring out the window at the stars.

            Of course, I have to be the one who half-carries him back to the lab with his arm slung over my shoulders, even though he has seven and one-eighth inches on me (I’ve measured). He’s tipsy to where he doesn’t have anything snarky to say about the bouquet of daffodils left propped against the door—he nearly tramples on them instead and staggers inside. I let him go and bend down to pick the bouquet up, snatching up the accompanying card. I already have an idea who it’s from, if the last fourteen I’ve received are any indication.

            _Dear Franken,_

_I know this is borderline excessive at this point, but I paid for fifteen bouquets and I’m not about to let them go to waste. Again, I’m truly, deeply sorry that I broke your nose. You seem like you’re getting better, because the bandages are off! Not that I spend a lot of time staring at your nose, or your face. Ugh, you know what I mean!_

_Anyway, these are the last of them, I swear. Yellow is my favorite color; here’s hoping you like it, too._

_Love,_

_Marie_

             I tuck the daffodils under my arm and the card in my inside pocket. Spirit has tumbled into the bathroom to dry heave into the toilet despite drinking a miniscule amount of alcohol, so I head back to the laboratory and leave him to choke on his own saliva. A clean Erlenmeyer flask from the cabinet. Two aspirin, crushed in the mortar and pestle days earlier, dissolved in exactly 150 milliliters of water. I move in the same routine as I have the past two weeks, pulling the other bouquets from the refrigerator and placing them around my workspace. Carnations. Roses in pink, yellow, and white. Daffodils from last week that are starting to wilt. Hyacinth mixed in with Queen Anne’s lace. I’ve never been much of a botanist, but Marie had a point. Flowers do brighten things up somewhat.

             I switch on the computer with a hum and play chess until I hear Spirit shuffle off to his room, then wait another hour. Hour and a half. Two hours. When I’m sure he’s asleep, I wheel over to the refrigerator again, pull out a fresh bag of general anesthesia, and hook it up to the IV pole. The work table is laid out, prepared. The gurney waits by the door. All that’s missing is the patient.

             Ordinarily I refrain from working on Spirit when he’s intoxicated. Alcohol tends to make anesthesia work a little too well, hence why doctors insist their patients remain sober for a good while before surgery. But I don’t have time to wait for sobriety. I roll him out of bed where he slumped on top of the sheets and onto the gurney, wheeling him back to the lab. With Kami and Marie close on our heels, there isn’t much time to spare. I need to figure out the process behind his wavelength manipulation so we can retain our edge.

             I’ll give my partner credit for that: his ability to adjust his wavelength to mirror those around him is unlike anything I’ve read about before. It makes us nearly unstoppable in battle, being so closely synchronized, and I suppose that’s what aids him in his socialization with our female classmates. How could you resist someone who was on the same page as you, able to feel what you feel? How could you help but be drawn in?

             Apparently this ability doesn’t affect me outside of our missions. Then again, we keep a rather wide berth of each other when class is in session.

             I’m always amazed by how easily his skin parts under the slice of my scalpel, how neatly the layers fold back and hold under the metal clips. How his lungs bellow in and out under his ribcage, still untarred despite how many cigarettes of mine he’s smoked. How his heart throbs wetly without any thought of the open air above it. How his esophagus and stomach lurch, churning through dinner and drinks. It’s poetry, really.

            “Heart rate 65 beats per minute. Respiration 15 breaths per minute,” I mutter to myself, writing in my notebook. Blood spatters on the page, but it can’t be helped—I’m not about to waste a pair of latex gloves just to take notes. “Temperature.” I slip a thermometer probe between his lips and wait for the beep. “97.6. A little low.”

            His soul sits pulsing just below his sternum, a soft orange hue. I trace a fingernail around its edge and watch it curl around my touch like a cat. So flexible. So willing. So very trusting.

            “Tell me your secret,” I whisper. “Tell me how you work.”

             The soul of course says nothing, because it’s a soul. But it continues to follow my finger wherever I put it, vibrating softly. I send a quick shock of my own wavelength down my arm, just to see if it’ll react. The soul jolts a little, as Spirit always does when he feels my electricity—you’d think being partnered with me for so long would override that instinct—but does nothing else. I frown and sit in my chair, pulling out a cigarette to light.

           “Soul appears to be in typical resting state,” I say as I write. “Ability to adjust wavelength still unclear.”

            I tuck the cigarette between my lips and give his soul a little harder shock. The smell of burning latex mingles with the smell of daffodils, and the moon snickers from the other side of the window.


	6. Spar!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which it's exactly what it says on the tin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Professor Satine Morningstar is an original character developed by DollyPop. I'm just borrowing her to teach

**Marie**

            “C’mon, Marie! Try to keep up the pace!”

            “I’m—ugh—I’m trying!” I yell ahead to Sid. Let’s see him try to jog with D cups and a sports bra that offers no support. I hug my arms to my chest tighter, my breath puffing out in little clouds in front of my face. Why oh why did Kami agree to these early-morning workout sessions with Sid and Nygus? And why did I go along with it?

            I mean, not that I’m complaining _too_ much. The exercise has been a nice release, and it’s a good offset to the rest of the week where I mostly sit on my butt and study if I’m not on missions. Which we’ve been doing a lot of lately. Besides, the jogging is doing wonders for my hips.

            We round the corner and stop when we come up to Nygus holding Kami’s ankles while she does curl-ups. Kami’s face is bright pink, but she keeps her arms firmly crossed over her chest and powers through it. I really admire her for that, her ability to keep going even when it’s hard. She pushes me to go harder without my realizing it unlike any of the meisters I’ve had before. Even Joe, sweet as he was, could be a little lazy. He let me slide with a lot in our training, mostly because he liked me so much.

            “97. 98. 99. And 100!” Nygus counts. Kami flops on her back, her dark hair fanning out from its ponytail. “You did really well today. A personal best for time.”

            “That’s—great—Nygus,” Kami huffs. “I always—want—to get—better.”

            “Obviously.” Nygus flicks her bright blue eyes up at me. “And how did it go for you on the track?”

            “Um,” I say. “Okay, I guess.”

            “Marie’s endurance is improving, but she could do better on speed,” Sid pipes up.

            “Hey, when you try jogging two miles with melons strapped to your chest, then you can tell me how speedy you are!”

            Nygus snickers behind her hand, and Sid looks at a loss for words, scratching the back of his neck. Kami sits up and glances at the stopwatch sitting by her feet. “ _Kotchi!_ We’ll be late for class if we don’t get to the showers now!”

            “I can skip a shower—”

            “You can _not_ ,” Nygus snaps at her partner. “I have to sit next to you all day, remember?”

            “You don’t _have_ to sit next to me, you just choose to.”

            “C’mon, Kami,” I say, offering a hand up. “Let’s go get cleaned up.”

            We head for the locker rooms underneath the bleachers, Sid and Nygus still squabbling behind us. While we walk, I try extending my wavelength a little to Kami, seeing if she’ll pick up on it. Out of the corner of my eye I see her smile and reach out for mine, latching on. We’re still having trouble resonating for any length of time—it’s like a rubber band that’s stretched too tight and suddenly snaps. Professor Morningstar told us to try little resonance exercises when we’re not in the middle of battle, just when we’re walking to class and stuff. See if we can stretch the rubber band out longer and longer. Today it seems to be easier. We’re both a little tired from exercising, but also generally in a good mood. Kami even hums a little as she steps in the shower and turns the water on after changing.

            “Do you know what we’re doing in class today?” she asks me from the next stall over.

            “I don’t remember, but I think Nygus might know. Hey, Nygus!”

            “Yeah?” she calls from down by the lockers.

            “What are we doing in Professor Morningstar’s class today?”

            “Sparring!”

            “Oh no…” I groan, leaning my head against the dark grey tile.

            “Eh? What’s wrong with sparring?” Kami asks.

            “Nothing,” I reply, but really, there’s a lot wrong with it. I’d gotten so used to sitting out during the spring because of Joe being in the infirmary and because I was too overpowered for most of the NOT students to fight against. The missions and physical training have helped, but it doesn’t make up for months of sitting on my butt and not doing anything. Also, some of my past partners, well, flinched a lot in sparring. As a hammer, I work best at close range, and I had a string of meisters who would freak out when their opponents had a mid-range weapon like a sword or battle axe that they had to dodge. I can’t tell you how many times I had to coax them out of a defensive stance and just _dive in there, throw me!_ Joe was the only one who seemed to get it after the first few swings. Kami got it right away on Presentation Day, even if it was an accident.

            I stand upright and grab my towel hanging over the shower curtain rod. Maybe today wouldn’t be so bad. Kami was a different meister, and a good meister at that. And maybe we would get paired up against some people who actually knew how to put up a fight. That was half the problem right there: people who didn’t take the sparring seriously and whined when they got knocked flat on their asses. If I’m going to get myself dirty in class, I want to get _dirty._

I dry off and change into my school clothes: a long black skirt and an olive green sweater with my high-heeled boots. Kami slips into her clothes, jeans and a soft blue shirt, and we’re off to class as soon as Nygus joins us. Azusa gives us a nod when we walk into class, her partner for the week nodding off in the seat next to her.

            “ _Junbi wa dekita ka?_ Are you ready?” Azusa asks Kami.

            Kami shrugs. “ _Watashi wa kangaemasu._ ”

            “And you, Marie?”

            I also shrug, because I really don’t know what to expect today. Azusa seems to be fine with that answer, because she turns back to the clipboard lying in front of her on the desk and starts making checkmarks, no doubt for some student council project or another. Professor Morningstar sweeps into the room after another small burst of classmates hustles in the door, her shawl flowing behind her.

            “Hello, everyone!” she calls, her deep red lipstick stretched across her mouth. “Sparring today, as you know, so give me a moment to collect my notes on who’s paired against whom and we’ll head out!”

            “Who do you think we’re going to get paired against?” Kami turns to me.

            “Better hope it’s not me,” Azusa says, looking over her nails. “Melee weapons like Marie don’t really work well against long-range weapons.”

            “What kind of weapon are you?”

            “Gunbow.”

            Kami scrunches up her nose. “What?”

            “It’s a shotgun mounted on top of a crossbow,” I say.

            “Closer to a sniper rifle, actually. I compress my meister’s wavelength into shots and fire them at the target,” Azusa explains. “Less than a half-inch margin of error.”

            “So it’s not really sparring for you,” Kami says. “It’s more like point, shoot, and boom.”

            “Something like that. I still need a partner that can aim.” Azusa elbows the dozing boy sitting next to her. “Can you at least _pretend_ to be interested, Erik? It’s just for the rest of the week. I didn’t think I was that boring.”

            “Ididn’tsaynothin’‘boutboring!” Erik blurts out, startling awake. Azusa just rolls her eyes. Professor Morningstar finally gets her notes in order and gives us the signal to head out, and there’s a massive shuffle for the doors. Kami’s soul links to mine, humming in excitement. She likes fighting. One night when we came back from a mission, I found her counting over the tatters and rips in her shirt while standing in the bathroom as if she was proud of them. Her wavelength stays high up on adrenaline for hours after we’re done taking out a pre-kishin.

            We make our way out to the training forest, the heels of my boots sinking into the dewy grass. Professor Morningstar leads us out to the clearing, then whips around when she’s standing in the middle of it, her dark hair waving over her shoulders.

            “All right, everyone, here are your assignments! Erik and Azusa, you will be paired against Dana and Jacob. Shara and Malik, Cam and Thomas. Olivia and…Daphne, yes, there you are, Daphne, stick by your partner, please…”

            I watch everyone whirl around us, some whooping and clapping each other on the back when they find out who they’re supposed to fight against. The crowd thins out, little by little, spanning out across the clearing so there’s enough room for any aftershocks. Some of the worst injuries don’t come from the spars people are in, but the effects that come off of other people’s spars. Fire blasts. Shrapnel. Electricity.

            “Kami and Marie?” Professor Morningstar calls out. I go up on my tiptoes to see above everyone—mostly everyone—so I can see her nod in my direction. “You’re paired against Stein and Spirit.”

            My heart doesn’t know whether to crash into my stomach or jump into my throat, so it settles for banging against my ribcage instead. Oh, God. All I wanted to fight someone who knew what the hell they were doing. I mean, not that Stein doesn’t know what he’s doing, but last time there was a spar he tore up half the clearing with an electric charge through the grass and they had to reseed the place. Since the scorching obviously didn’t come from Spirit, rumors flew around that Stein had somehow figured out how to use his own wavelength as a weapon. I have no idea if those rumors are true, but it’s the only thing about him that kinda scares me.

           “We can take them.”

           “What?” I say, turning to Kami.

           The gleam in her dark brown eyes is hard and fierce. “We can take them out.”

           “How are you so sure?”

           “I’m not.” She takes off down the clearing as soon as she sees the boys walk the same way. “But if I believe we can beat them, that’s halfway to really doing it.”

           “Is that true?”

            Kami holds her hand out, and I put mine in hers. She squeezes it with a smile, and her wavelength keys up higher than ever. “You want to find out?”

           “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

           “Transform, please.”

**Spirit**

            Well, well, well. I finally get to see Kami Yamamoto fight up close and personal with Marie. What a treat! I’d been hoping that this would happen for ages.

            Stein holds his hand out, a silent request for me to transform. Sometimes I give him hell for not asking, but this time I do it. I’m seriously interested in what might happen today, and I’d rather not start off on bad footing.

            I blink out the side of the blade to where Kami is standing with Marie tight in her fist, her eyes narrowed. We’re all tensed, waiting for the professor to give us the go-ahead. Stein’s fingers twitch around me, eager to begin.

            “Ready? And _begin_!”

            There’s no ‘ladies first,’ although if I were the meister I would totally invite Kami to take the first swing. Stein strides across the field, holding me out in front of him to block. Kami widens her stance, waiting for him to draw closer. When he stops at the midway point, she takes the opportunity to charge toward us, Marie poised and ready to strike.

            Kami swings down. Stein swings up to block. Electricity surges through my blade and down my shaft and _hello_ , Marie! Lovely to see you again without any fists lashing out at my face. Kami lets out a yell and kicks right where the blade meets the shaft, and if I were in human form, that would definitely hurt. Right now it just makes me cringe.

            Stein makes a swipe for Kami’s legs, which she jumps over with such grace she must have been a track star back in Japan. Or maybe a cheerleader. Either way, those legs are godly, because she kicks at Stein this time and lashes out with Marie when he arches back from the blow. He narrowly escapes a brush against his chest, snarling. I’m lofted above his head, twirling so he can get some better leverage and hopefully a better position. Stein swings me down, a guillotine delivering vengeance, and Kami flips out of the way, her braid like a whip behind her head. She punches up with Marie, and demon steel meets demon steel again with a clang.

            _Soul Resonance_ , Stein whispers urgently through our connection. _Now._

_Do you think that’s really necessary? We’re not fighting a pre-kishin. It’s just the two of them._

_And the two of them are gunning for our top position in the Academy. Do you really want that taken away from you?_

            _No._

_Then do as I say. I’m the meister._

I let my soul latch onto his, and the familiar crackling erupts all around us. Our resonance forces Kami to dance back, her eyes blown wide open. She mutters something in Japanese, then tightens her grip on Marie, her heels digging back in the dirt. It’s like she’s waiting for an opening, any opening.

            I’m not anticipating Stein balling his fist up where I can’t see it by his side. I’m not anticipating him screaming “ _Soul Menace!_ ” and flexing his fingers out toward Kami. And I’m definitely not expecting her to get blown back against the nearest tree trunk, head snapping back in a way that heads should _not_ snap back if the person is still conscious.

            I’m barely aware of flashing out of weapon form and darting across the grass. I hear Stein snarl “ _Soul Sutures_ ” under his breath, but it’s like I’m hearing it from a thousand miles off. I don’t even know what I expect to do—I have no way of breaking his attack. Hell, I’ve never even seen him do this attack before.

            All I know is I need to get to Kami.

**Marie**

            _KAMI!_

            I land with a dull thud at the base of the tree, Kami’s hold on me suddenly released. Her eyes flick down to where I’m lying in the grass, and I can see her straining to move. But whatever attack Stein used on her is keeping her pinned to the bark of the tree like a butterfly on corkboard.

            Spirit is running over to us, though I have no idea why. Unless he has some magical way to get Kami unstuck, they’ve pretty much won this spar before it’s begun. Why is he helping us? Why is he abandoning his meister?

            Fuck it. If he’s gonna break some unwritten rules, so am I. I bolt across the field toward Stein, his fingers tensed out in Kami’s direction. He sees me raise my leg to kick him in the ribs, but he dodges and makes a kick of his own, grazing my stomach.

            “Let her _go!_ ” I scream, raising a fist. At this point, I don’t care if I break his nose again. I don’t care if I put a hundred little bumps along the bridge of his nose and bruise his cheeks. He just needs to let this be a honest fight. “This isn’t fair!”

            “I’m not interested in fairness,” he says with a lazy smirk. His hand is still clutched in position, even with me throwing punches and kicks. “This is more flexing my muscle.”

            “The only muscle I see you flexing is your tongue, mister. Let Kami go!”

            “Mm, I think not.”

            I finally get a hold on his wrist, grabbing it tightly. The slightest bit of surprise flits across his face, then disappears as soon as it came. He tilts his head down toward me, because even when I’m in heeled boots he’s still a few inches taller.

            “This is your final warning,” I hiss, inching closer. “Let. Her. Go.”

            The smirk on his face is so maddening I want to slap it off. He inches closer to me, so close our noses could brush against each other.

            “ _Make me_ ,” he whispers.

            A jolt shoots down my spine, and my breath hitches. For a second I’m worried he somehow got his wavelength inside me to wreak internal damage. I flick my eye up to his wrist, then to his own eyes, which are positively dancing behind half-closed eyelids. How can someone look so bored and curious at the same time?

            Well, Mr. Bored and Curious. Try this one on for size.

            I lean forward and press my lips to his. A thunderclap booms in my chest, and as cliché as this sounds, I swear time screeches to a halt. I feel his fingers relax under my grip, then he tugs his wrist away. His hand floats to my shoulder like he means to grab it, but he misses and splays it against my back instead. His other hand drops awkwardly to the side, like he’s afraid of touching too much. Another thunderclap in my chest, or maybe that was Stein making noise. Maybe he’s humming?

            I flutter my eye open for the briefest second and catch sparks flying around us. Actual, honest-to-Death sparks. He’s so close to my face that I’d probably be cross-eyed if I had both eyes, but he looks so peaceful. Why does he have such thick eyelashes? They brush against his cheeks so softly. His hand shifts on my back, and I swear he’s trying to bring us closer. Wait. He’s _enjoying_ this?

            “Break it up, you two!” I hear from somewhere around us. It takes my brain a few seconds to register that holy shit, we were in the middle of sparring and Professor Morningstar is the one yelling at us. Her boots stomp in our direction, and Stein takes that as his cue to break up the kiss. But not before I feel a sharp pain on my lower lip, then his teeth dragging as we pull apart. The look in his eyes is smoky and incomprehensible.

           “Are the two of you all right?” Professor Morningstar huffs out the question, her heels digging into the grass.  

           I nod. Stein tilts his head in what I think is supposed to be a nod, but his attention isn’t on the professor.

           “Marie. That was a rather… _unconventional_ way of disrupting an attack, but effective nonetheless. Stein, I’m going to need to speak with you about your methods. How a student of your rank figured out a move previously used only by three-star meisters is something worth exploring.”

           Stein shrugs by way of answer.

          “Your spar is over. Stein, stay where you are. I’ll send Spirit back your way once I check Kami for any injuries. Marie, follow me.”

           I follow after Professor Morningstar, throwing a glance back at Stein. His lips are swollen and bright pink against his pale face, twisted up into something like a smile.

           “Kami? Ms. Yamamoto, are you all right?”

            “I’m—ugh!—I’m fine,” Kami grunts. Spirit got her to her feet somehow, but she barely looks like she could support herself. Her fingers twitch spasmodically, and her braid is frizzed and falling apart. There’s a smell like burning socks lingering in the air around her. 

           “Whatever attack Stein used must have had an electric component to it,” Spirit says. I notice his grip around Kami’s waist tighten when she staggers. “It’s like she got zapped.”

           “More like I was tied down.” The glare in Kami’s eyes could set an entire forest ablaze. “What the hell did he do to me?”

           “Spirit, you’ve never seen your meister use this move before?” Professor Morningstar asks.

           Spirit shakes his head. “Stein trains a lot by himself in the desert. He told me he was developing ways to use his wavelength as a weapon, but I had no idea…” I see him chew the inside of his cheek nervously, “I had no idea he could do something like that.”

           “Marie, take Kami to the infirmary—”

           “Professor, with all due respect, I’m _fine_ ,” Kami says. “Really. Just, please…let me finish this.”

           “There is nothing to finish. Your weapon partner ended the spar rather handily.”

            Kami switches her gaze to me, incredulous. “You did?”

            “Uh, yeah,” I scratch the back of my neck, willing the blood to stop rising to my cheeks. “I-I hope that was okay.”

           “Did you give that freak what was coming to him?”

           Something cold slithers into my throat and puts ice on my voice. “Stein’s not a freak,” I say coolly. Kami flinches, the heat fading behind her eyes, and the cold something hisses with satisfaction.

           “As I was saying, Marie, please escort Kami to the infirmary. I would do it myself, but I must supervise the rest of the spars.” Professor Morningstar’s lips tip up at the corners. “You four have certainly set the bar high for your classmates, I can tell you that much.”

           “Is there anything you want me to do?” Spirit asks.

           “Go back to your meister. I’ll be having words with him once I check on everyone else.”

           “Come on, Kami,” I say, looping an arm under her armpits. Spirit lets her go reluctantly, and she sags against my side. “You can walk, right? I don’t have to drag you?”

            “Nobody drags me,” Kami readjusts her stance. “Just…go slow, okay?”

            “Got it.”

            We make our way back toward the Academy, moving like the world’s slowest competitors in a three-legged race. Kami’s right leg must have been pinned to the tree pretty hard; she can barely put any weight on it. Her head is slow to move, too—I’d be surprised if she didn’t have a concussion, to be honest.

            “Hey,” she says, cutting her eyes to the side. “Why are your lips so swollen? Stein didn’t get a hit on you, did he?”

            The kiss comes rushing back to the forefront, and so does my blush. “Uh, no,” I reply. “More like I got one on him.”


	7. Examination Caffeination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which much coffee beverages are consumed, High!Stein is real, and wet dreams happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> High!Stein might be my adopted son, but he's originally DollyPop's creation.

**Kami**

            “I have a large soy latte with three shots for Cam-eee?”

            “It’s _Kah-me_ ,” I inform the barista, reaching for my cup. Hopefully I don’t drop this one like I’ve dropped my last three orders. Electricity still jolts through my hand even though it’s been weeks since the sparring class, and it always happens at the most inconvenient times. Pens, books, drinks: all of them inevitably end up on the floor. I’ve dropped Marie at least five times in practice this week alone, and just when I’ve built up enough strength to hold her properly. She seems to understand, but she’s also been a bit…out of it lately. I catch her staring off into space a lot, chin in hand, drawing little circles on the tabletop.

            I can’t really blame her for being out of it. It seems like everyone has been that way ever since the date of the Super Written Exam was announced. Academic exams have always been where I excel, so I’m not too worried about me, but I’ve seen classmates literally walk right into walls because their noses were buried so deep in their textbooks. Four of them have slammed into the front door of Deathbucks like wayward sparrows since I showed up thirty minutes ago.

            It’s only going to get worse, isn’t it?

            I weave my way around tables packed with study groups—well, the propped open books would _suggest_ they’re studying, anyway—back to where Azusa is nestled at a tiny booth near the bathrooms. She offered to study with me three days ago, and I accepted immediately. My most recent notes are a tangled mess of English and Japanese, only made worse by the fact that my hand jags across the page at odd moments because of the spasms. Azusa’s notes, on the other hand, could make a master calligrapher weep with joy. Everything about her is neat, truthfully. Even on a Saturday afternoon, when most people seem to be wearing the contents of their closet floor, her shirt looks freshly ironed and her boots polished.

            “Ah, finally,” she says, putting down the cup of tea she wisely ordered as soon as she walked in. “You’ve waded through the masses.”

            “And I managed not to drop my drink this time!” I say, holding the cup aloft. Sure enough, a spasm picks right then to shoot up my arm, and I just barely set the cup down on the table in time before it hits the floor. Azusa gives me a look while I settle into the booth, pinching my wrist to make the twitching stop.

            “ _Anata no te wa dodesu ka?_ ” she asks me once I’ve made myself comfortable.

            “ _Okare sukunakare onaji,_ ” I shrug. “I’ve tried everything. Put it in ice water, soak it in bath water, rub the muscles down. Nothing helps.”

            “Did you see the nurse?”

            “Yeah. Her best guess was the Soul Stitches caused temporary paralysis by overriding the electric impulses in my muscles, and the spasms are just my body getting used to being mobile again.” I roll my eyes. “She said they just need to work themselves out.”

            “Someone ought to work Stein out,” Azusa murmurs over the lip of her teacup.

            “I couldn’t agree more.” I didn’t expect flowers or anything after the spar, but an apology would have been nice. I’d heard whispers in the hallway that no one below a three-star meister had ever been capable of such a controlled attack before. Using one’s soul wavelength as a weapon wasn’t unheard of among students, but Stein acted like he’d done this for years. Maybe that’s how he’s managed to beat up so many kids. If he ties them down, they can’t run away.

            Just thinking of him boils my blood. God, what a creep.

            “You know what would be the best form of revenge?”

            “Hmm?”

            “Getting the top score on the Super Written Exam.” Azusa taps the cover of one of her textbooks. “He’s had it for the past two years, and he doesn’t even study.”

            “He doesn’t _study_?” I ask, incredulous.

            “Do you see him anywhere in here?”

            “Stein doesn’t strike me as the study-out-in-public type. Or the socialize-with-people type. Or even much of a person, really.”

            Azusa smirks, nudging her glasses up her nose. “You could beat him easily. You’re a far better student than he’s ever dreamed of being, and more intelligent as well.”

            “Aww. _Arigato,_ Azusa!”

            “All right, don’t get all mushy on me. We don’t have the time.” She flips open her notebook. “ _Shigoto ni ikimashou._ ”

            Azusa starts drilling questions, her eyes rapidly scanning down the page to look for something to stump me. But here’s the thing: unlike Stein, who shows up to class just to claim his ass was in a seat, I actually attend class. I listen to the professor. I take notes. I’m _present._ That’s more than I can say for that gray-haired _baka._

            “What is it called when weapon and meister experience pure resonance?”

            “Harmonization.”

            “What if one wavelength is slightly altered by outside factors, such as sensory—”

            “Dissonance. Come on, Azusa! Give me something challenging.”

            She flips through a couple pages in her notebook. Glances down at one textbook, then over to the one propped open against the napkin dispenser. “Discuss whether it is more critical to have a sound mind or sound body in the preservation of a sound soul.”

            Ooh, now that _was_ a hard question. “Ideally, one should maintain a balance between the two to fully optimize the soul’s abilities,” I say. “But if one had to choose, they should try to preserve their mental faculties to the fullest extent possible.”

            “Why?”

            “Well…um, _watashi ni byō o ataeru_ ,” I fold my hands behind my head. “With phenomena such as Madness, for example. Madness affects both the mind and soul, though the interplay between the two is still largely unknown.” I take a sip of my latte. “You can push your body to its physical limits, but your soul would remain relatively unaffected. Keep your mind sharp, though, and your soul will be content.”

            “Wow. Why aren’t you teaching Soul Studies?”

            I startle so badly that my latte is only saved by quick hands on Azusa’s part.

            “What are you doing here, Spirit?” she asks, clearly annoyed.

            “Just came to see you lovely ladies,” Spirit says with a wink at me. His fingers flutter around the cardboard sleeve of his Deathbucks cup. “Wondering how your studying is going.”

            “It’s fine,” I say. My hand picks then to start twitching again, because life cannot cut me a break. I slip it under the table and pinch my wrist like before, willing it to stop.

            “Clearly it is. Maybe you should be tutoring me.”

            “Maybe you should be using your time for more productive things instead of flirting with the baristas and servers,” Azusa rolls her eyes.

            “Hey! I’ll have you know that flirting is _very_ productive.” Spirit honestly looks offended by the suggestion before he turns to the table behind him. “Excuse me, sweetheart,” he says to one of the girls sitting there, “could I impose on you to borrow this chair?”

            “N-no! Not at all!” the girl giggles.

            “Thank you! Pink is such a lovely color on you, by the way.” He spins the chair around and plops down on it, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. “See? I’m building social status. That’s productive.”

            “And you’re building a migraine in my head just by existing,” Azusa snaps. She stands up, pressing her fingers to her temple. “ _Watashi wa toire ni iku yo._ ”

            She sweeps out from the booth and heads back to the ladies’ room. I consider following her, but then I’d be leaving Spirit alone at our table, and who knows who he’d have sitting in our places by the time we got back? So I plant my feet firmly to the floor, my hand still in spasms.

            “So,” Spirit takes a sip from his cup. The writing on the side tells me it’s an Americano. “How are you?”

            I furrow my brow. “You’re asking me?”

            “You’re the only one here that I can see. I can’t bolt into the bathroom and ask Committee, now can I?”

            “Committee?”

            “Yeah, Queen of the Committee Chairman. It’s a nickname for Azusa. I call her Committee for short.”

            “I thought nicknames were supposed to be shorter than the person’s real name.”

            Spirit opens his mouth as if to reply, but simply takes another mouthful of his drink. Ha! I’ve backed him into a corner.

            “You have a good point,” he mumbles after he swallows.

            “I know I do.”

            “Back to my original question. How are you?”

            I half-wish there wasn’t a lid on my soy latte, because right now feels like a good moment to stare into the depths of my drink and avoid eye contact. How can I answer him? We’ve never had a conversation before, and no, I don’t count him muttering _you’re going to be okay_ on a loop while I was stitched to a tree to be a conversation. _How are you_ isn’t a question you throw lightly at a person.

            “I’m…fine,” I look up and decide to say. That should be noncommittal enough.

            Spirit sets his cup down on the table and tilts his head at me. His red hair (it has to be dyed) swoops over his forehead and dangles in his eyes as he does so—a calculated _bishounen_ move if I’ve ever seen one. “You’re not fine,” he replies, folding his fingers so he can rest his chin on them. “I saw your hand earlier. You’re still having problems with it.”

            “What business is that of yours?”

            “My partner did it, and I feel partly responsible for letting it happen.”

            “Did you know Stein would use that attack?”

            “Well, no—”

            “Then it’s not your responsibility.” I pick at the corner of the napkin resting under my drink. “You didn’t know that was his plan, so you couldn’t have prevented it. Professor Morningstar didn’t set forth any rules about the sparring; it was no holds barred. These things _happen_ , Spirit. It’s part of our life as weapons and meisters.”

            “But…”

            “But what?”

            Spirit shakes his head. “I still could have done something.”

            “Doubtful,” I say. “Whatever Marie did obviously finished the spar.”

            Spirit smirks. “Oh, it definitely finished the spar, all right. And started up a few other things…”

            I raise my eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

            “Isn’t it obvious?”

            “I don’t live in your little bishie brain, thank goodness, so no.”

            Spirit leans forward conspiratorially, as if about to unveil some international secret. “They _kissed._ ”

            It takes me a moment to process what he just said, but then—“Excuse me?”

            “They kissed. Did the lip tango. Sucked face—”

            “Brilliant, you’re a pretty boy and a thesaurus!”

            He takes my sarcasm seriously, alas. “There’s no other explanation. If Marie’s been acting drifty to you, then Stein is off in another galaxy. He shows up to classes only if we’ve got them with Marie, and he keeps, like,” Spirit touches his lips with two fingers, “doing this when he thinks I’m not looking. He’s smitten as a kitten.”

            My hand clenches around my soy latte; I swear I could get it to boil with how steamed I am now. It wasn’t enough for that bastard to pin me down to a tree, he also had to go and use some kind of spell on Marie so he could kiss her? I know spells are more of a witch thing, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he’d figured out how to cast a few. As soon as I got out of the infirmary, I went to the library and looked up the Soul Stitch attack. Only a select few three-star meisters have ever managed something close to that technique before—this is something he’s come up with all on his own. What the _hell_ is Stein doing in the Academy if he’s so overpowered?

            Whatever. _Kare wa hentaidesu, watashi wa kare o korosu tsumoridesu._ He can do what he wants to me, but he’s not touching Marie again if I can help it.

            “Kami?” Spirit blinks at me. Ugh, his eyelashes are obscenely long. “Are you with me?”

            I shake my head. “Sorry. Thinking up a plot for murdering your meister.”

            “If it helps any, they both seem to be too awkward to even make eye contact right now. I don’t think they’ll be mashing mandibles anytime soon.”

            “Could you _not_ ,” I cringe. “Just…stop with the horrible kissing innuendos. Please.”

            “Engaging in mastication. There, I’m done.” Spirit leans back in the booth, a silly grin on his face. I glare at him, and he rolls his eyes. “What? I guarantee you that’s how Stein would have phrased it.”

            “I will kill him for this. How dare he touch—”

            “Hey, hey, hey. Seriously, have you tried talking to Marie about this?”

            “I—what?”

            “Have you sat down, one-on-one like we are, and talked through what happened during the spar?”

            “Spirit, it’s exam time! We’ve both got bigger concerns on our plates at the moment.”

            “Things like this can mess with your resonance, you know.” Spirit tips the rest of his drink down his throat.

            “Yes, and I’m really sure you and Stein have little talks every time something comes up in _your_ partnership,” I say, rolling my eyes. “He seems like the type to really get deep into his feelings.”

            “I didn’t say anything about that. I just think it might be a good idea.”

            “Why?”

            Here’s the thing: I wasn’t exactly the most popular girl in school back in Osaka. Other girls would spend their time figuring out new ways to hike up their skirts and giggling about the boys in homeroom, which is fine. A perfectly decent and socially acceptable way to exist as a teenage girl. But I have plans. Ambitions. Well-laid intentions that, if someone tries to rip them out of the ground, they’ll trigger an entire minefield of my wrath. I didn’t really have time for anyone who wasn’t a friendly acquaintance, and the only person I’d ever consider taking advice from regularly was Mama. So for this bishie to be sitting across from me with his long, ridiculous hair and equally long, ridiculous eyelashes, spitting out advice for how to patch up what I could arguably call my first best friendship and partnership? A little weird.

            “Trust me,” Spirit says, laying his hand out across the table. Our fingertips brush one another. “This would be good for both of you.”

            “How do you know?”

            “I know this sort of stuff.”

            I squint at him, but his smile doesn’t fade and his eyes don’t get any less blue—wait, weren’t they gray before? Doesn’t matter. Spirit’s not throwing me a line like I’ve watched him do to other girls or to Marie. There’s no sleaze behind his voice, no malice. I flick my eyes down to where his soul hangs in his chest, and it’s a warm sunset red, glowing. He seems interested in actually helping me out. But still, just to be sure…

            “Did Stein put you up to this?” I ask.

            The crushed look on Spirit’s face gives me the answer before he speaks. “No. No, not at all! Marie is my friend, and, well, I’d like to think we’re friends, too.”

            “Do you call everyone who you hold one conversation with your friend?”

            “What would you prefer to call this?”

            “Acquaintanceship.”

            “Too many syllables. We’re friends,” Spirit insists, his smile returning.

            “Fine.” I look over my shoulder at the bathrooms and swear I catch a glimpse of black bobbed hair hovering by the water fountain. “Since we’re newly minted friends, would you mind telling Azusa I’m sorry but I had to go, and that we can finish our study session later?”

            “Where are you going?”

            “Have something I need to take care of,” I mutter, gathering up my books and shoving them into my _randoseru_. Spirit was right: Marie and I need to talk, but I think we also need to get out of the city for a bit in order for it to be productive. There was a mission in Paris I’d had my eye on for a while, yet I never put a claim on it since it seemed too high-level for us. We could make a little vacation out of it, though. Stay in a fancy hotel, go window shopping, watch cute French boys at the sidewalk cafés. It’d get Marie’s mind off of Stein for a little while, at least.

            “Good luck with whatever it is, then,” Spirit says, raising his cup a little to me as I stand.

            I look at him for a long moment before also raising my cup. “Thank you. And good luck studying.”

            “Oh yeah, studying. Maybe Committee’ll help me out whenever she shows up again.”

            I have to admit his optimism is infectious.

 

**Stein**

            “Franken…” Marie breathes as I pull away from her throat. She shivers when I blow over the dark pink spot I’ve left there, her fingers curling in my hair. “P-please…”

            “Patience, Marie,” I hum, my hand inching up her thigh. “Good things come to girls who wait.”

            “I’ve waited long enough!”

            I click my tongue and kiss her again, toying with the hem of her skirt. She tastes like vanilla and the tea she drank this morning, grassy and mellow. I bite her lip again, and her pulse quickens just under the skin.

            “Nnn, that feels so good,” she murmurs in the brief moment when we pull apart for breath. Her breasts rise and fall to meet my bare chest, her blouse unbuttoned and lying open on either side of her. If she’d sit up, I could reach behind her back and undo the clasp to her bra so I can touch her where she’s been begging me to, but Marie seems far more interested in my mouth being close to hers. I can’t say I don’t feel the same about her.

            Marie tugs me back down for another breathless kiss, her hand sliding down to the back of my neck to keep me there. One of her legs crosses over my back, nudging my hips down to hers, and oh, that is a _bad_ idea. This is sure to disrupt the mood. If she feels how aroused I am—

            “ _Death_ , Franken,” she wiggles underneath me, “you’re so _hard_.”

            I try to bury my head in the crook of her neck, my ears burning, but her hand keeps me from moving. Her fingernail scratches at the nape of my neck, and I let out a soft whine because it feels indescribable. Everywhere she touches me feels like an open flame, yet I have no desire to cool off. If anything, I need the heat to intensify.

            “Don’t be embarrassed,” Marie whispers. “I’m just surprised. All this for little old me and some kissing?”

            “Your kisses are sublime, Marie.”

            Pink is such a pretty color on her. Before she can say anything else, I’m back at her throat, nipping her skin and making her squeak. My hand traces further under her skirt and over the plush skin of her thigh, stroking up to her panties. I pause from giving her another mark to ask if it’s okay to keep moving, and she sighs an affirmation. I kiss down the column of her neck, nuzzle the tops of her breasts, and work down over the softness of her stomach. Her panties are soaked against my hand, and I take in her scent. Musky, a little salty, but very distinctly Marie. She moans as her skirt becomes little more than a cloth ring around her hips and I move lower, lower, lower—

            “WAKE UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!”

            Water splashes down over my head, and I sit bolt upright, hair dripping in front of my eyes. Spirit is standing right next to my bed, an obnoxiously bright yellow bucket in his hands, grinning.

            “IT’S EXAM DAAAAAAAAAY!” he sings. “Come on, Stein, we gotta get to school early for this!”

            “Fuck school,” I groan, flopping back down on my now-soaked sheets.

            “I can think of someone else you’d like to f—”

            “Finish that sentence, Spirit.” I glare at him. “I dare you.”

            “Hey, I wasn’t the one having the hella loud wet dream. ‘Ooooh, Marie, you’re so sexy. Oh, God, touch me there. Yeaaaaaaaaaah, right there, that’s amazing.’”

            “I admire your ability to bullshit on the spot, I really do.”

            “I’m detecting sarcasm there.”

            “Your detection is accurate.”

            “Well, I’m gonna go take a shower before you pull a scalpel on m— _why do you keep one in your nightstand what the hell!_ ” Spirit panics when I slide the drawer open on my nightstand. I don’t keep a scalpel there, or any sharp implement, but the action does what it needed to do, which was get him out of my bedroom. I wait until I hear the squeak and rattle of the pipes from the shower turning on before I sit up and ruffle my fingers through my hair to dry it.

            So. Today’s the Super Written Exam. I’d almost forgotten, truthfully. Everyone else turns it into a weeks-long ordeal leading up to it, packing every café and decent seat in the library to study, but I never crack open a book. Cramming only works to fill your short-term memory, whereas if you learn as you go, the facts and figures lodge in your longer-term memory to draw upon later. I fall into the latter category, although I learn more from independent learning than classroom instruction. The Exam should be simple enough. I earned the top score of the class last year and the year before that all without studying.

            I reach into my drawer and pull out the joint I’d rolled last night along with my lighter. I’d have to invest in a pipe soon, but I’d rather not venture into a smoke shop without proper ID, and glass-blowing materials, though they’d be useful for creating my own lab glassware, are an expensive investment. For now, joints will have to do. I tuck the tiny white roll between my teeth and light the end, taking a deep drag in and filling my lungs with the acrid smoke. If the proctor gives me any grief, I’ll tell them it eases my pre-exam jitters. I can think just fine when I’m high—it’s the calm I’m chasing after.

            There’s a secondary yet related benefit to smoking today: it’ll keep my mind from wandering back to where it was just before Spirit so rudely woke me up. Wet dreams are normal, an indication that my hormones were in fluctuation due to puberty. But they’ve become more frequent lately, ever since Marie kissed me to stop the spar. It was a move I couldn’t have calculated for, a move I wouldn’t have made myself. She was unpredictable, a force of nature. She made an indelible mark on my brain that I can’t scrub out. Implying, of course, that I actually want to remove any trace of Marie Mjolnir from my mind, and currently every part of me is voting in opposition to that course of action.

            Spirit wrinkles his face at me when I clump downstairs to the kitchen. I’m sure he makes some smart-ass comment about how the stench of marijuana clings to my clothes, but I can’t find the energy to care or pay attention. I push my waffles around the puddle of syrup on my plate for a while until Spirit tires of the scraping fork tines, then I follow him out the door. All I need today is a pencil and my mind; thankfully I carry both with me at all times.

            Marie is down in the front row with her friends when I walk into Class Full Moon, and I nod in her direction. I consider waving, but I keep my hands in my pockets because I tend to weirdly fixate on them while high. Spirit takes a seat three spaces down from me when we sit. As if it matters when we’re up in the top row of desks. The exam packets get passed up to us, and I set to work. My pencil skims down the page like a figure skater, circling letters and scrawling out short answers in the most legible writing I can manage, which isn’t saying much. Not that it’d be much better if I were sober.

            I finish the exam in about twenty minutes, well before anyone else is done. I cast a glance over at Spirit, who looks as though he’s lost midway down the third page. Everyone else below me is either staring blankly at the exam or scribbling furiously, with Kami Yamamoto leading the pack. I suspect she thinks she’ll take the top class position away from me, being the newcomer she is—watch us get within a point of one another on the final score list. I nestle my head down on my desk and close my eyes, drifting off to a daydream. This one is considerably less sexual, just sunflowers and waving blades of grass and sun-bronzed cheeks. We hold hands, thumbs brushing shyly over one another while the wind tousles our hair.

            I only come back around when Spirit has the decency to tap me on the shoulder as he gets up to leave. The whole classroom empties out before I make my way down the stairs, slap my exam down in front of a squinting Professor Winter, and stroll out the door. Marie is sitting on the floor in the hallway, and she scrambles to her feet when she sees me.

            “H-Hey, Stein!” she says, bouncing on her toes. How she bounces on her toes while wearing high-heeled boots is a mystery I’ve yet to untangle. “How was the exam for you?”

            I shrug. “All right. I finished about twenty minutes in.”

            Her eye rounds out wide, the pupil dilated. “Really? Wow, you work fast. I only had about ten minutes left before the exam period was over.”

            “Mmm.” I can’t help but notice how markedly different this conversation is from our first one, which ended in sparks dancing around us and a kiss for eternity. Highly unlikely that this could turn out the same way, but I can dream.

            “You okay?” Marie tilts her head. “Your eyes look kind of funny.”

            “Marijuana tends to do that to a person.”

            “You’re _high?_ Oh, Stein, how could you? The Super Written Exam is, well, super important!”

            “Marie,” I hum, closing my eyes. “I don’t really care about the exam.”

            “Well, you should! It’s the one that determines who’s at the top of the class, and you’ve been at that spot for the past two years!”

            “Ah, so you _have_ been paying attention to me.”

            “I—huh, well, yes—what does that matter?”

            “It matters because it inflates my already engorged ego to dangerously high levels.” I roll my eyes, and Marie catches onto the sarcasm and giggles. Mm, her giggles are a pleasant sound. Like bubbles popping.

            “Oh, come _on_. You’re nowhere near as bad as—”

            “Would you like to go for a cup of coffee?”

            Now it’s time for Marie’s lips to round out into a perfect O. “Are…are you asking me out on a date, Stein?”

            “Is that what the kids are calling it these days? I’m afraid I’m not current with the vernacular.”

            “ _Stein!_ ”

            My name sounds so nice in her mouth. “Yes. As a manner of speaking, yes, I’m asking you on a date.”

            “In that case,” Marie says, holding out her hand to me, “I’d love to.”


	8. What Happens in Paris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which events between our main four characters primarily take place in the French capital.

**Marie**

            When Kami slid the pair of plane tickets across the breakfast table to me, I was confused. Well, more that I was tired than confused. A combination of post-exam stress letdown (I got a 93 and I am _proud_ , I busted my ass for it) and actually going on a date with Stein (I mean, he was coming down off of a weed high and it was just a trip to Deathbucks, but _still_ ) left me unable to sleep at night, which meant I was groggy in the morning. In fact, on the morning in question, I was about to face-plant into my oatmeal, my head slipping off of my hand and hovering dangerously over the piping hot bowl.

            “So?” Kami had asked, straining on the edge of her chair to see my reaction. “Do you want to?”

            “Is this another mission?”

            “Yes, but I thought it’d be good for us to have some time together away from the Academy. You know, like…how do you say it in English…girl time?”

            “How long would we be gone?”

            “Four days. Long enough to take in Paris at its finest before we take on a pre-kishin and come home victorious.” She’d reached across the table for my hand, her wavelength making the jump from her fingertips to mine. “Please? It’d be like a vacation. Just the two of us.”

            Kami had looked at me so earnestly, her eyes rounded out in her best attempt at being puppy-like. I could read between the lines well enough, though: she was worried about us as partners. During exam time, we put our mission-taking on hold so we could hole up in the apartment and study as needed. Our morning workouts with Nygus and Sid were suspended, too, and we stopped heading out to the training forest to practice stances and attacks. Basically, anything that wasn’t studying was off the table. Kami would try these little exercises Professor Winter suggested to increase resonance while we looked through our books: hold hands for ten seconds, squeeze, and release, touch palm to palm, link pinky fingers. Apparently resonance improved with more physical contact. Yet I could still feel her straining to keep me lifted for too long, despite all the strength training she’d been doing with Sid.

            I have to keep reminding myself that _only the worthy can wield the Hammer of God._ But the myth also says that those who are truly worthy can lift Mjolnir as though it’s a feather. Does that mean Kami truly isn’t worthy? Does Mjolnir care if someone works to be able to hold it versus having a natural strength? Or was this all a story Mama told me to keep me away from bad partners while I was at the Academy?

            I had hoped Kami was it. The partner that would make a Death Scythe out of me so I could serve my time, find a man to marry, and retire. I’m so tired of the revolving door, of never feeling quite like I fit with anyone. I’m tired of others making it seem like _I’m_ the problem. I can’t change my soul! It’s electric, it’s hard to handle. It shocks the hell out of people both figuratively and literally if they don’t yield to it. If Kami isn’t the one, then who is it?

            I know who I _want_ to be it, but he already has a partner. He also has a soft smile and hair that shines like moonlight. And eyes that remind me of the forests back home. When he looks at me, I swear I see fog lifting from his irises. He held my hand on the way to Deathbucks, and I could feel his soul reaching for mine, also buzzing electric. We had something like a low-level resonance, not battle-ready, but conversational.

            _Stein,_ I think to myself as Kami and I board the plane two days later. _Are you worthy?_

            The flight to Paris is mostly filled with me sleeping and Kami reading in the window seat. I wake up long enough to munch on some peanuts and sip on water a couple times, and one time a Salisbury steak dinner that was probably more Styrofoam than the container it arrived in. At least it stopped my stomach from growling and waking me up. When we touch down in Paris, the bags under Kami’s eyes look heavier than our carryon luggage, but we make it through security and without much problem. We both make a silent pact in the taxi to sleep most of our first day in the City of Lights; the jet lag wouldn’t do any wonders for planning to hunt down a pre-kishin.

            The next day we go sightseeing. According to the file Kami got from mission claims, the pre-k has been mostly lurking around the Notre Dame at night, snatching up unsuspecting night walkers and lovers out on a romantic stroll. So we take a tour of the cathedral, Kami scoping out every nook and cranny available to her eyes (and some my eyes couldn’t see—I’m sure she was using Soul Perception some of the time). We also check out the Louvre even though neither of us are really into art, although it was fun to wear berets and tilt our heads at the paintings as if we knew what we were looking at. After lunch, we go shopping for a bit, ignoring the snooty salespeople who were clearly making comments about us in French (hey, I take French classes, and my ass does not look like _une citrouille, merci beaucoup!_ ), and then back to the hotel room to crash for a while. We end up ordering room service so we could paint our nails and pore over the various tourist maps Kami had collected on our walks around the city.

            “Do you think the pre-k could have moved?” I mumble, nibbling on the end of a lobster roll. “Why would it stay by the Notre Dame if there are other more populated areas of Paris it could grab souls from at night?”

            “This particular pre-k apparently likes taking its victims by surprise,” Kami muses, her chin resting on a gently curled fist as she looks over a map spread out between us. She huffs a breath on her still-wet nails. “Or maybe it has a particular attachment to the cathedral.”

            “It is kind of a romantic place.”

            “Speaking of romantic…” Kami looks up from the map at me. “You’d tell me if you were seeing someone, wouldn’t you?”

            The question comes as such a shock, I have to choke down the bit of lobster roll I was chewing and reach for a bottle of Perrier sitting on the room service tray. “S-sorry, what?”

            “I just wanted to ask.”

            “Well sure, but why?”

            “I heard you kissed Stein to break up our spar, and you went out with him for coffee after the Super Written Exam.” Kami lifts her chin off her hand and spreads it flat on the map so her nails can dry a little faster. “So are you two a thing? I mean, it’s okay if you don’t want to tell me—”

            “No, no!” I exclaim. “It’s fine. Um, I don’t _think_ we’re a thing. Nothing’s official.”

            “So you’re just messing around with each other?”

            “It’s not like that!” I insist, probably coming off way harsher than I need to because Kami flinches.  

            “Well, whatever you are…just be safe, okay?”

            “Kami, I’ve dated boys in the past. Boys plural. I’ve been fine.”

            “Stein is different. I kinda get some strange feelings from him.”

            I roll my eye. “Are you seriously giving me the Stranger Danger talk right now?”

            “No.”

            “Look, if this is still about what happened with the Soul Stitches…”

            “It’s not,” Kami lies, looking away. Of course it is, it has to be. There’s no other reason she would be bringing this up, unless she was somehow jealous of Stein.

            “He won’t do anything like that to me,” I say firmly.

            She raises an eyebrow. “You know this for a fact?”

            “I do.” I’m not sure what makes me feel so certain about this, but I can feel my soul flare up and electric current hum through my bones when I say it. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”

            Kami gives me a long look, her dark brown eyes boring into my face. She holds up her freshly painted hand, her pinky extended. “Swear on it.”

            “A pinky swear?”

            “That’s a thing in America, right? You make promises to your friends and link pinkies?”

            “Yeah,” I crack a smile and hook around her finger with mine. “I promise I’ll be safe around him.”

            “Okay.”

            “What do you promise?”

            “ _I_ have to make one, too?”

            “Yes, silly, that’s how this works!”

            “Mmm.” Kami closes her eyes in thought for a brief moment, then snaps them back open. “I promise…to stand by you. To support you in your choices, no matter what they might be. Because that’s what friends do.”

            “That’s what friends do,” I nod. And we shake on it.

            The next night, we go hunting. Kami and I slink through the shadows toward Notre Dame, dressed in our best gray clothes so we weren’t as noticeable. Not that we wouldn’t be able to explain ourselves to the _gendarme_ if we were stopped; Academy students essentially had clearance to do whatever was necessary to catch pre-kishins as long as it didn’t involve “major property damage or gratuitous injury, up to and including untimely death.” I should know—‘Zusa has quoted the Academy rulebook more times than I can count, and I swear Kami has it memorized.

            “What do we do?” I whisper when we’re standing in the square. It’s close to midnight, and the only company we have are a few pigeons pecking the cracks between the bricks. The golden streetlights surrounding the square pale in comparison to the moon shining high above us, grinning bloodily just like back at home. Everything seems to be quiet, calm.

            “We wait,” Kami says simply.

            “So we just stand in the middle of the square and hope that this pre-kishin comes out to try and get us?”

            “More or less.” She crosses her legs and plops down on the bricks, facing the cathedral. “Unless you want to pretend to be lovers to lure it out.”

            “No, that’s fine,” I say. Not that I have any objections to the idea; I just don’t think I could be terribly convincing as a lover of women. I leave Kami sit there and walk toward the perimeter of lights and the statue of Charlemagne. He looks so regal on top of his horse, scepter raised, his two noblemen on either side of him. With the shadows angling up at his face, he almost seems mean, but I’m sure he was a nice king, really—

            A rustle in the trees behind the statue. The sudden grip of filthy fingernails on the back of my neck. I let out a choked scream as the pre-kishin lifts me from the ground and hisses in my ear.

            “ _I’ll make a fine meal out of you._ ”

 

**Spirit**

            “I really don’t think we should be doing this,” I say for the umpteenth time as we walk along the Seine.

            “That’s why you’re the weapon and I’m the meister. I call the shots.” Stein replies.

            “Yeah, well…I’m older.”

            “I’m smarter.”

            “I’m taller.”

            He bristles like a cat at that comment, his eyes flashing dangerously. It’s not like he can dispute the fact when he has to physically look up at me. Check and mate, Stein.

            “Whatever,” he huffs, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Let’s just get to the Notre Da—”

            A scream cuts through the night, followed by another, higher-pitched one. Stein stops in his tracks, his back ramrod straight. We both listen, waiting for any other sound. A long, drawn-out shriek hits my ear next, and suddenly Stein takes off running across the street, leaving me behind on the sidewalk.

            “Stein, _wait!_ ” I yell, dodging around a taxi that just couldn’t stop for me. “Is it the girls?”

            “What do you think?” he shoots back over his shoulder. God, when did he get so fast? He’s hurdling over bushes like an Olympian, crashing through the trees. I know part of it has got to be that Marie is in trouble, but now doesn’t seem to be the time for making any cracks about the probably-totally-completely huge crush he has on her. Now we just have to find her and Kami.

            Oh, fuck. If Kami’s screaming, what kind of pre-k have they stumbled across?

            Stein comes to a halt behind a giant white pedestal with some dude on a horse, peeking around the corner of it. Jesus Christ, that pre-kishin is _huge._ It must be at least nine feet tall and practically hulking with shifting dark muscles. A sudden crack of lightning erupts from its oversize fist, and Marie drops down to the pavement, her hand transformed into a hammer’s head. The lightning forces the pre-kishin back momentarily, but then it lunges for Kami, hissing like a giant snake.

            “They can’t handle this on their own,” Stein mutters. “We’re intervening. Transform.”

            “Stein, this is their mission—”

            “That was an order, Spirit.” He glares at me out of the corner of his eye. “Transform. Now.”

            I see Kami back up, trip, and drop to all fours as the pre-kishin tumbles over her head, and I immediately switch into scythe form. Let it be known, Stein, that I’m not doing this to help stroke your ego. I’m doing this for her. To save her.  

            Stein grabs ahold of my handle and scurries around the pedestal, electricity building in the palm of his free hand. He waits for the pre-kishin to have its back fully turned, then he darts across the square. Kami screams again. Stein lashes out with his palm and splays it on the pre-kishin’s back, shocking it hard. The creature roars and rears, trying to find the source of its agony.

            We do a flip off the pre-kishin’s back, me acting as an impromptu vaulting pole so Stein doesn’t completely lose his balance. Kami mouths ‘what the _fuck_ ’ at the two of us, but then the pre-kishin whirls around to face us again. This time, Stein uses me to strike, taking out one of its scuttling legs (why do they always grow extra legs when they consume souls, it’s creepy).

            _Spirit,_ Stein whispers through our low-level resonance. _How do we finish this?_

He’s asking me in spite of already knowing the answer. Quizzing me. He claims it’s to help me analyze battle situations so I can fight solo more proficiently as a Death Scythe, but I can’t shake the feeling of being patronized.

            Still, I scan the pre-kishin as best I can through my line of sight in the blade, looking for any weak points. _The belly seems like the best spot,_ I reply, _but I don’t think we can get underneath with the pre-kishin thrashing around like it is._

_You underestimate my abilities. As you pointed out a few minutes ago, I’m quite agile._

_Yeah, yeah._ I roll my eyes. _Let’s just get this done and bail the girls out._

            _Soul Resonance!_

            I feel the surge of his wavelength amplifying with mine, coursing through both of us in constant feedback. Stein dodges between the pre-kishin’s remaining legs and swings me upward, gouging deep into its guts. The shriek the pre-kishin lets out is unholy, and its body bursts into a shower of dark purple blood. Stein backpedals far enough away to miss the worst of it, holding me up as an umbrella of sorts. In the midst of the downpour, the ugly red soul hovers in midair. Without thinking, I leap back into human form and snatch it, only to hear Kami let out an angry, bloodcurdling scream.


	9. Start of Something New

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kami and Spirit find a connection in the wee hours.

**Kami**

            “You absolute _bastard!_ ”

            “Kami, no!” Marie lunges for me and wraps her arms like a vise around my torso so I can’t move. Damn, she’s strong—I should really know that by now as her partner, but it still takes me by surprise. It doesn’t help that Stein is standing in front of us in his near-spotless white jacket (I’m happy to see _some_ of the blood splattered on him), an arrogant smirk carving up his face. God, my blood is boiling just looking at him.

            “Marie, let me go!” I yell.

            “No! What is fighting gonna do right now other than land at least one of us in the hospital?”

            “She has a point, you know,” Stein comments, tugging a cigarette out of an inside pocket and lighting it casually. “I doubt any of us can speak French passably to navigate an emergency room.”

            “You shut the hell up!” I snarl at him. “You sabotaging little prick, we laid claim to this mission weeks ago!”

            “Did you really?” The cherry glow of his cigarette lights his face up red for a brief moment, making him look creepier than usual. “The mission posting was still up on the wall when Spirit and I left the Academy. Someone must have neglected to take it down.”

            “Yeah, so?”

            “ _So_ , Academy rules dictate that although the mission has been claimed, any weapon/meister pair is free to pursue it if it remains posted on the wall. It’s so rescue teams can find pairs that are in distress on particularly hostile missions.”

            Stein tucks the cigarette back between his teeth, walks further out into the square. The moonlight catches his hair, and Marie was right, his hair _is_ silver. He pauses when he’s right in front of us, takes a deep draw on the cigarette, and blows the smoke right in my face. I scrunch up my nose, trying not to let the stench annihilate my senses completely. _Asshole._

            “For someone who plays by the rules so much, you don’t seem to have a very good grasp of them, do you?” he asks in a low voice.

            “Back off, Stein.”

            He flicks his green eyes over his shoulder. “I’m sorry?”

            “You heard me,” Spirit says, his shoes clicking on the bricks. Because of course, why wear something practical to a fight when you can wear black patent leather nonsense on your feet instead? “Back off.”

            “Why should I?”

            “Because they did nothing wrong. We were the ones who infringed on their mission; they didn’t need rescuing.”

            “Really? Their fighting technique, or lack thereof, indicated otherwise.”

            “Stein,” Spirit sucks in air through his teeth, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. “Not everyone is as practiced as us.”

            “You mean _talented_ as us, right?”

            “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

            Stein takes another draw on his cigarette, his attention shifted over my shoulder toward Marie. The way his gaze combs over her makes my spine tingle, and does he have to make it so obvious that he’s staring at her chest? _Hentai._ He blows the last bit of smoke over his shoulder, his eyes never leaving her, then stomps out the filter on the concrete.

            “Come on, Spirit. I think it’s time we took our leave,” he mutters, turning away. “You collected the soul, didn’t you?”

            Spirit nods jerkily, casting a glance my direction.

            “Excellent. _Bonsoir,_ Kami!” Stein titters in the most grating falsetto. “ _Bonsoir_ , Marie,” he adds in a much deeper tone.

            I watch the two of them slink away into the night, my blood cooling marginally. Marie releases her hold, the heels of her boots clunking back away from me.

            “We should go, too,” she says. When I turn to face her, she continues. “W-we lost this one, okay? It might not have been entirely fair—”

            “It _wasn’t_ fair!” I spit. “What gives the two of them the right to tromp all over the Academy like they do anyway? Stein goes around beating up anyone he wants for no reason. Spirit picks up girls and throws them away after he’s had a good time like they’re nothing. If they’re so damn great, how come Stein hasn’t made Spirit a Death Scythe already? Why do they have to poach other people’s missions?”

            “What do you want me to do, Kami?” Marie’s face is bright pink, her braids coming more undone than before and unwinding on her shoulders. She flicks a few stray hairs out of her eye and huffs. “Huh? You want me to go tackle Spirit and punch the soul out of his stomach?”

            “Actually…”

            We share a look for a long time before Marie breaks out into a goofy smile. I can’t help but grin at her when she starts giggling, “Could you _imagine,_ though? Like, it just shoots back up out of his throat like…I dunno, one of those skee balls or something and flops around on the pavement a little?”

            “Oh my God, Marie! That’s gross!”

            “No, what’s gross is the thought that I’d have to put something in my mouth that was once in Spirit’s mouth. _That_ is seriously gross.”

            I feel like I’m going to collapse into a ball because of how hard I cringe while laughing, but the tension is broken. We walk away from Notre Dame and toward the Seine, hoping to flag down a taxi or some wayward bicyclist at this hour that will get us to the hotel. My stomach is rumbling for some kind of late-night snack, but I doubt room service will still be open. Honestly, I’m lucky if I still have the room key stashed in my jacket pocket, and I do.

            Marie flops down face-first on her bed the second we get in the room, sighing. Good, sweet Marie. Why can’t I let go like she does? Why can’t I shrug off tonight as something that just happens and wait for the next chance? She doesn’t chomp on the bristles of her toothbrush like I do, or stare at the ceiling for two hours after shutting the lights off because sleep feels too far away. Her head hits the pillow, and poof. Practically dead to the world.

            I click the TV off and massage my temples, groaning. Our flight was at 11:00, and it’s nearly 2:00 in the morning now. The time zones were already messing with my head, so I needed sleep, but sleep clearly didn’t need me. Stupid asshole Stein, ruining everything. Ruins my chance at feeling true French luxury by snuggling into a down-feather mattress and drifting off to dreamland. I didn’t even get to eat that much French food, and I’ll most likely be a wreck at breakfast.

            My eyes land on the ice bucket sitting on the table next to the door. This place might be luxurious, but it had to have an ice machine in the hallway, right? At least it’ll give me something to do. I sweep my legs over the side of the bed, look over, and see Marie is missing from her bed. I don’t have enough energy to focus my Soul Perception to look for her, so I shrug it off, grab the ice bucket, and head for the door, unlocking it—

            —and almost running smack into Spirit.

            “AHHHHHH! _Nantekotta i!_ ” I scream, dropping the ice bucket. Well, that’s one way to send your blood pressure through the roof. “Spirit, what the hell are you doing here?”

            “I came…to talk to you?” he replies, the phrase coming out like a question. He lowers his fist, and I realize he was milliseconds from knocking on the door when I opened it.

            “At 2:00 in the morning? You walked over from your hotel to mine at this hour just to talk?”

            “You’re obviously awake, and no. Stein and I are just down the hall from you.”

            “Wonderful,” I roll my eyes, scooping up the bucket and brushing past him down the hallway. Just my luck—get humiliated on a mission that drained my savings down to pennies just to get here, and the people who humiliated me happen to stay in the same hotel. _Suteki_.

            “Kami, seriously, I do want to talk to you.”

            “No offense, Spirit, but I’m not interested.”

            “But you are interested in knowing where the ice machine is, because you’re going the opposite direction.”

            I turn on my bare heel and look at him. Even in the wee hours, with a rumpled dress shirt and sloppily tied shoes, he looks like a complete bishie. I swear he checks out the light sources whenever he’s in public so he can tilt his head and best show off his cheekbones. No one should look this good at this time of the night.

            “Kami, please,” he says, and he sounds earnest this time. “I just want to talk to you.”

            I plant my foot down and give him a long, hard look. We must look like quite a pair, me in my sleep shirt and shorts and him in a half-assed suit. “Fine. Where to?”

            “There’s a café off the lobby downstairs that’s still open. And don’t worry, I’m sure they wouldn’t judge your bunny slippers.”

            “I don’t _have_ bunny slippers!” I insist, stomping back down the hall toward him. “They’re _ducks,_ ” I add as I march past him back into my room.

            I clunk the ice bucket back down on its tray and root through my luggage, looking for something acceptable to put on. Despite what Spirit suggests, I’m not going downstairs in my pajamas in a hotel where very important people traipse in and out regularly. We are representatives of the Academy at all times while out in public, thank you very much. The least we can do is look dignified.

            I end up reaching down to the bottom of my bigger suitcase and digging up a black turtleneck sweater. Perfect. I pull it on, along with the jeans I’d taken off just a few hours earlier, run a brush through my hair, and slip into the ballet flats sitting alongside the bed. Just enough to make me look put together, but not enough to make it seem like I’m trying too hard. Not that I’m trying to impress Spirit or anything.

            He gives me a low whistle when I walk out of the room, wallet in my back pocket.

            “Oh please, I’m not even wearing makeup,” I say, rolling my eyes.

            “Hey, you think I care about makeup? I think girls wear too much of it, anyways,” Spirit replies, loping alongside me with his hands in his pockets.

            “Whether a girl wears too much or too little of something is really none of your business. She should do whatever makes her feel comfortable and happy, first and foremost.”

            His shoes scuff on the carpet behind me. I turn to look, eyebrow raised, and I notice his Adam’s apple bob up and down in his throat.

            “You’re right,” he says after a dry moment. “You’re absolutely right.”

            I toss my hair back over my shoulder. “I know I am. I’m rarely wrong.”

            One quiet elevator ride (French Muzak is pleasant enough) and a tiptoed walk across the marble lobby floor later, we’re at the café. Aside from a gaggle of college-age students who are packed into a booth and having a hazy discussion over wine and cigarettes, the café is largely empty. The server who comes to our table looks vaguely offended at actually having to work at this hour, but she scribbles out our order for an Americano, a macchiato, and a plate of tiramisu Spirit insisted we share without too much grumbling.

            “So,” I say, once the server totters off to the kitchen. “Is this what we do now?”

            “I beg your pardon?”

            “Is this what we do, you and I? Meet up in cafés and make small talk until one of us makes up an excuse on why we have to leave?”

            “We’ve only done this once before, Kami,” Spirit reminds me. “Unless you of course want to make this a regular thing.”

            “Spirit, for the love of all that’s good, I cannot handle you flirting right now.”

            “Why? Is it because it’s working? I see you blush—”

            “No,” I snap. “It’s because I don’t know how many other girls you do this with. You’ve got a bit of a reputation around the Academy, you know, and just because I’m one of the nerds doesn’t mean I don’t hear what goes on through the grapevine. So _stop_ trying to make me feel special by ordering tiramisu for us to share or stopping by my hotel room ‘just to talk’ or giving me that look you give me all the time in class, don’t think I don’t notice, because I know it means nothing to you. I’m just another girl.”

            He fiddles with the corner of his napkin. “I wouldn’t go save ‘just another girl’ when she’s in over my head on a mission,” he mumbles.

            “Who said I needed saving? Who said Marie needed saving?”

            “Do you know why that mission stayed posted up on the wall?” Spirit looks up at me, his eyes rimmed in red. “Stein wasn’t bullshitting you before. It’s Academy practice to leave them up in the event of a team needing a bailout.”

            “We didn’t _need_ a bailout—”

            “People have died trying to take that monster out!” Spirit says a little too loudly for a late-night café. I see our server waiting around the corner of the kitchen door, our drinks perched on pristine, paper-thin saucers, hesitant. The college kids hush him. Spirit realizes he’s gotten loud and brings his voice to a lower volume. “That mission has been posted on the wall since I was _thirteen_ , Kami. For two years! Well before you ever showed up at the Academy. Four teams have been—they’ve been—”

            He unrolls the napkin in front of him and dabs at his eyes. “The only remains they’ve ever found is a pair of hands, holding each other. Weapon and meister, together in their last moments. And to think that you and Marie might have become number five…well, Stein and I couldn’t stand around and do nothing.”

            Our server seizes the moment where Spirit has his face covered with his napkin to deposit our drinks and tiramisu on the table, giving me a sympathetic look before walking away. I, for one, am at a loss for words, and I drum my fingers lightly on the table just to fill the space.

            “Why did you take this mission on, anyway?” he asks once he regains some composure. “You and Marie were barely qualified.”

            “We needed the challenge.”

            “Yes, but why?”

            “We need to get stronger! As a team!” Now it’s my turn to be loud. “I’ve been trying for months to build up my strength just so I could hold Marie without getting tired, and now we’ve finally gotten to that point after all the missions and the early morning workouts and everything we’ve been doing. All of that means nothing if we don’t keep pushing ourselves to be better.”

            Spirit takes a sip of his Americano, then sets it back down on the saucer with a clink. “Kami, I don’t mean to suggest any of what you’re doing is wrong or not working, but…what if you and Marie aren’t meant to be partners?”

            I’ve had very few jaw-dropping moments in my life, but this would be one of them. “Spirit, I was brought to the Academy to _be_ Marie’s partner. I was the one who got her back in E.A.T.! We can’t just split up!” I take a deep breath and lean in closer to him. “Do you have any idea what I gave up back home in Osaka? The scholarships that were being offered to me from elite high schools because of my test scores? My life was set up there, and I left it all behind.”

            “You know you wouldn’t have to leave the Academy, right? You could go into the rotational program—”

            “And get shuffled a new weapon every week like they’re a playing card? _Ie,_ _kekkōdesu._ ”

            “I’m just trying to help y—”

            “ _I don’t need your help!_ ” I say, standing up from the table so forcefully that I knock my chair over. To hell with the college kids. Let them gawk. “Goddammit, Spirit, I don’t need a knight in shining armor leading me around. I might be new to all this, but I’m not clueless! I have a brain, you know, I’m not a ditzy _moe_ Japanese schoolgirl with huge eyes and a scrap of a plaid skirt—”

            “I _know_ that,” Spirit insists, standing up to meet me. “I just— _ow!_ ”

            He doubles over, an arm over his stomach, his face contorted in pain.

            “Spirit?” I say, leaning back over the table toward him. “Are you okay?”

            “Yeah, I’m—ah—fine. Just an old scar giving me trouble.”

            “Old scar?”

            “I got it during one of my missions with Stein. Right up the middle of my stomach.” He draws a line on his shirt to illustrate, still wincing. “I got raked pretty badly by our target, bad enough that I passed out from losing blood. It still gives me trouble sometimes.”

            “Do you need to go back up to your room?”

            “No, no! I’ll be fine. Let’s just—ow—share our dessert, okay?”

            Reluctantly, I pick my chair back up and sit down, keeping my eyes fixed on Spirit. We get a few bites into the tiramisu before he doubles over again, and I take that as our cue to wave over the server and ask if she could please bring us a container so we could take the dessert on the go. It’s probably for the best, anyway; I can’t see a clock hanging up anywhere, but I’m sure it’s going on 3:00 in the morning, and we’re all just going to be absolute treats when it’s time to get to the airport. Best to get in a few hours of sleep while we can.

            We get upstairs to the hallway where our rooms are without much incident when we’re treated to a wild sight. Marie darts out of an opened doorway in her pajamas, eyepatch slightly askew and giggling, while Stein leans out after her, tips of his ears bright pink. And is that faint lipstick I see on his face and— _ew_ —his neck? And why is Spirit grinning like he’s won the fucking lottery?

            “Having a good night, you two?” he calls out.

            Apparently this snaps Stein and Marie out of whatever lovers’ trance they’re in, because Marie suddenly looks embarrassed and Stein’s sheepish grin turns into a scowl as he slams the door to his room shut. I hear the deadbolt snap into place, and I look at Spirit, concerned. Not that I’m about to offer him a place in my bed tonight if his roommate is in a mood, but I could begrudge him some space on the carpet if Marie doesn’t object.

            “Well. _That_ was certainly interesting,” Spirit nods as Marie slips back into our room.

            “I don’t know that I’d call it interesting.”

            “Maybe not to you, but to me…ah, never mind. Oh, before you go. A present,” he says, digging in the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

            “Spirit, please. You already paid down at the café, and you’re giving me the tiramisu—”

            “No, this is different.” Spirit produces what looks like a slightly larger baby food jar from his pocket. Inside, stuffed to the brim, is a dark red, glowing, pulsing…no way.

            “That’s not…” I start to say. He nods before I even finish. “But you ate the pre-kishin’s soul!”

            “Stein only asked if I’d _collected_ the soul, which technically I did.” Spirit presses the jar into the palm of my hand. “He sometimes likes to take the souls back to his lab for observation before I consume them.”

            “He’s weird.”

            Spirit shrugs. “Anyway, you probably want to have Marie eat that before you get to the airport tomorrow. Not sure how you’d explain it off to security.”

            “I…thank you,” I say. “You did reap it fair and square, you know, so you really should keep it. I can handle remedial lessons.”

            “Don’t mention it.” He picks up my free hand in his and kisses the back of it gently. “Good night, Kami.”

            “Good night, Spirit.” I fish the room key out of my bra and slide it in the lock. Spirit’s eyes follow mine right up until the door swings shut between us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stein and Marie's interaction in this chapter was cut in the final draft due to time constraints (and also because this chapter would be hella long if we switched to one of their perspectives). If anyone is interested to know what goes on between them, I'd be more than happy to polish up the scene and publish it as a related one-shot.


	10. Do You Wanna Dance?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stein and Marie have the shippiest chapter of this whole fic, my god. I am shame.

 

**Marie**

            I never would have guessed that Kami Yamamoto could stew about something for so long. Usually I’m so good at reading people. I know when my friends are having a bad day or when a classmate isn’t getting something in class (I raise my hand and pretend I’m the one that’s not getting it, just to save them some face). I know who likes who and who wants to go out with who long before the people involved probably do. Social stuff clicks with me that way.

            But Kami? Either she was really, _really_ good at keeping her emotions under wraps, or she just decided over Christmas break that she had a major issue with me and Stein being friends. I knew she was sore at him for both the spar and the mission in Paris, even though Spirit did end up passing along the soul to me (Thanks, Spirit! I hope your card made it to you on time!). But she never let on that there were any problems until three days after I came back from Sweden.

            “Why did you lie to me?” she says while we’re studying at the kitchen table.

            I look up from my English book ( _Pride and Prejudice_ ). “Huh?”

            “You said you’d tell me if you were seeing someone, but you didn’t. Lying by omission is still dishonesty.”

            “Kami, what are you talking about?”

            “I’m talking about how you came dancing out of Stein’s hotel room giggling like you’d gotten away with something bad, then had to hurry away when Spirit and I showed up.”

            “Jesus, is that what you’re mad about? We were just talking, Stein and I.”

            “Really?” Kami leans back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest. “Because I have a hard time believing that when your first two interactions with him, as far as I know, were an accidental punch to the nose and a long kiss.”

            “Who told you about the kiss?!” Shit, I gave myself away, because Kami’s whole aura grows darker.

            “Spirit did.”

            “Since when do you believe everything Spirit says?” I shoot back. “You’re always talking shit about him being such a pretty boy and whatever, so you know, I should be asking you a similar question about why the two of _you_ were moseying up the hallway together, practically arm in arm!”

            “We were talking!”

            “That’s what Stein and I were doing!”

            “Bullshit! I saw lipstick all over his face and neck!”

            “Kami, do you even hear how crazy you sound right now? Who wears lipstick to bed?”

            “I didn’t see you take it off in the bathroom. And I have no idea what you did once you slipped out of the room to go have your ‘conversation’ with him,” Kami says, making air quotes, “but I don’t really care. I’m not your mother.”

            “Oh yeah? Then stop trying to act like it!” I snap _Pride and Prejudice_ shut and stand up from the table. “I don’t owe you any fucking explanations for what I do in my free time, and I don’t need you telling me who I can and can’t be friends with. In fact, just for the hell of it, I’m going to see Stein right now!”

            “He’s a fucking _psycho!_ ” Kami screams after me. “He’s a freak that followed you all the way to Paris just so he could—”

            I stop listening at that point, because it’s only going to piss me off even more. I duck into my room long enough to grab my purse and keys and swipe my jacket out of the closet, then I storm out the door. Fuck Kami. Who the fuck is she to tell me what to do? I know I’m younger than her, but it’s only by a few months, and I don’t need her to be my big sister watching over me. Where does she get off on doing that?

            I end up crashing in Azusa’s apartment that night, and for the next couple days. Part of me knows I should probably be the bigger person and try to make amends first, but it wasn’t a fight I started to begin with. Eventually I move back into the apartment (‘Zu’s couch wasn’t the most comfortable place to sleep anyway), and Kami and I stop orbiting each other so cautiously. There is a rift, though. A definite rift. Our resonance-strengthening exercises seem like a distant memory when she tries passing me a napkin at lunch without us brushing fingertips. I’m ready to move past this, but I don’t think she is.

            Whatever. I’ve got other things to focus on for the time being, like the Snowball Dance that’s coming up this weekend. Why it’s called the Snowball Dance when there isn’t a single snowflake on the ground in Death City and we aren’t close to any mountains where there would be snow (if you want to see snow, visit Sweden in December and early January) is beyond me. Maybe Lord Death is trying to make us feel like we’re a typical American middle school/high school by using the same name that’s used for winter dances all across the country. There’s nothing typical about a dance hall that’s lit with candle sconces and has skulls carved above the doorways.

            Despite what Kami might be thinking, Stein and I haven’t really talked all that much. We do pass notes to each other in Soul Studies through Spirit, but Stein isn’t the chattiest person on paper, although he did draw me an anatomically correct heart one day that I may or may not have taped into my journal almost immediately when I got home. I half-expected him to ask me to the dance, even turning down several offers from other guys to go as dates. But part of me also knew not to expect it. Stein wasn’t winning himself any popularity awards, and his skin probably crawled at the thought of attending a school function anyways.

            Still, I went shopping for a pretty blue dress with ‘Zu and Nygus, along with some matching strappy heels that make my ankles wobble a little when I walk (this is why I will always, always, _always_ prefer boots with heels, no matter how nasty and hot it is outside). Just because I didn’t have a formal date didn’t mean I couldn’t doll myself up like I had one. I bought all-new makeup for the occasion, and a sparkly hair clip shaped like a snowflake to pull some of my curls back off my face. My textbooks got shut up two hours ahead of the dance’s start time so I could pamper myself with a bubble bath. Kami didn’t even grumble about me using up so much hot water for the bath like she often does.

            Of course, getting ready two hours ahead of schedule means that I have forty-five minutes of anxiously squirming on the couch, waiting for…I don’t know what. I shouldn’t be bouncing to my feet so quickly when I hear the buzzer go off for the apartment and practically jamming the talk button into the wall, that’s for sure.

            “ _Hey, Pulverizer!_ ” Spirit chirps once I manage to squeak out a hello. “ _Is Kami ready to go?_ ”

            “You’re ten minutes early!” Kami hollers from her bedroom. “We agreed on 7:45!”

            “ _I just wanted to take her on a nice, long walk under the moonlight before the dance, you know? Marie? You get what I mean?_ ”

            “ _Ja, ja,_ ” I roll my eye and hit the unlock button. A pang of jealousy goes off in my gut when I open the door and Spirit’s standing there with a single red rose, looking every bit like a Fabio wannabe with his shirt half unbuttoned under his suit jacket. Kami steps out of her room with perfect timing, wearing a sparkly ice blue dress and silver shoes with a matching clutch, eyeliner winging out to perfectly crisp points. Spirit wolf-whistles and Kami rolls her eyes, but I can tell she’s truly blushing under her blush and foundation.

            “See ya at the dance, Pulverizer!” Spirit calls over his shoulder when the two of them walk out of the apartment, the door clicking shut behind them.

            I pace the kitchen floor barefoot after they leave, wondering at least eight times whether I should just forget the dance, change into my pajamas, and spend the night eating too much ice cream and watching rom-coms. My mind is like a ping-pong match, thoughts of _he’s probably not there, you’re wasting your time_ volleying back and forth with _but he could be there waiting for you, and you’d crush him if you didn’t show up._ Eventually I shake my head and look up at the oven clock, screeching when I realize it’s almost 8:30. Shit! He could have left already!

            It shouldn’t take me twenty minutes to get to the Academy that’s usually a ten-minute walk away, but that’s the price I pay when I wear heels and have to watch for cracks in the sidewalk. The marble steps are an absolute nightmare; I should get a damn medal for making it up to the door without a twisted ankle. At least the balloons and overly-glittery signs at the entrance point me the right way to where the dance is so I don’t get lost (and I _would_ find a way to get lost).

            Madonna’s “Vogue” is pumping through the doors when I make it to the dance hall, and I step inside to see dozens of people striking their best model poses on the dance floor. Under the flashing lights, I see Spirit trying to get Kami to join him, with Kami shaking her up-do in a definite no. Smirking, I make my way over to the refreshment tables and start pouring myself a glass of punch.

            “That’s been spiked, you know.”

            I drop the ladle back into the bowl, narrowly avoiding splashing some punch on myself. Stein is leaning against the wall behind the tables, his eyes nearly glowing in the dark.

            “Then why are you drinking it?” I ask, nodding at the glass in his hands as I come around the tables to meet him.

            “Because alcohol makes these things more tolerable.” He jerks his head out toward the dance floor.

            “Why are you here if you hate these things so much?”

            His lips turn up in a half-smile. “Is this Twenty Questions?”

            “Gotta do something to pass the time.”

            “Fair enough.” Stein takes another sip of punch. “Spirit dragged me here. Or rather he dropped me off at the Academy a half-hour early so he could saunter over to your apartment to get Kami. Fine by me—gave me some time to smoke.”

            “Not weed, I hope.”

            “You sound like my rabbi.” A low chuckle of amusement rumbles through his throat. “No, cigarettes this time. Getting stoned at a school dance doesn’t make it on my list of things to do for amusement.”

            “What is on your list?”

            “Dissections. Social observations, or as you might call it, people-watching. Having this conversation with you.”

            Dammit, him saying that should _not_ make my heart go into hummingbird mode. Neither should him accidentally slopping a bit of punch on his chin and using his pinky to swipe the liquid back up to his lips. It’s hard to tell with the multicolored dance lights going haywire (also because I only have, you know, one eye), but I swear he’s watching me the whole time he does it. And sucking on his finger for far longer than necessary.

            Death, take me now. I’m a goner.

            “Something the matter, Marie?” he asks in a low voice.

            “Ah…nothing! Just, uh, a little thirsty.”

            “Have my drink.”

            “You said it was spiked!”

            “Wishful thinking on my part, I’m afraid. Do you think Lord Death would let any alcohol slip past the door to his precious high school dance? Highly unlikely.”

            “Oh, whatever.” I take the cup from his hand and slosh the rest of the punch back.

            “How do you know that didn’t have backwash in it?”

            “Mmmmmbmbmmmb!”

            His teeth are now visible in his grin. “Didn’t quite catch that, Marie.”

            I swallow painfully hard to force everything down, then take a few breaths. “I was trying to say, ‘It’s not like I haven’t swapped spit with you before.’”

            The dance lights go red at the end of “Vogue” and most of the dancers take that as their cue to swarm the refreshment tables like a starving horde. Stein slips out from behind the table and appears to head out toward the balcony for some fresh air, but instead turns at the last moment to lean against the doorway. Oh, I shouldn’t be thinking about how the moonlight plays in his silver hair, but I _do_ , and I think about how his hair goes with his suit so well, and how his lips are stained red from the punch, and oh my God, I need to stop.

            “I need a break from all these people,” he mutters when I finally catch up with him.

            “Why not go outside, then?”

            Stein shrugs. “Don’t want you to get cold.”

            Oh gosh, he’s thinking of _me?_ As in he’s concerned for my well-being? “We are in the middle of a desert, Stein, but I appreciate the thought.”

            Jangly acoustic guitar strumming signals the start of a new song, a slower one. Oddly, no one seems to be in any hurry to make it back to the dance floor, content to linger on the edges of the room. Something sparks in my mind—I’m gonna ask Stein to slow-dance with me. That way I’ll know if what we are is anything worth pursuing.

            _He’s gonna say no,_ a nagging voice in the back of my head pipes up.

            **_If you never ask, the answer will always be no._**

_Yeah, but he says no, and then what? You spend the rest of the night miserable and heartbroken in a way-too-expensive dress?_

_**He’s not going to say no.**_

_How can you be so sure?_

            “I just know these things,” I whisper to myself.

            “Marie?” Stein raises his eyebrow.

            “Dance with me.”

            “I’m afraid I only know how to waltz. Foxtrot, too, if I can get my feet going. My mother was going to teach me to tango over break—”

            “This is swaying, silly,” I say, and I literally put myself in his hands by taking them and cupping them around my waist. “See, and I’ll put my arms up around you like this,” which I do, pressing my wrists to his flushed neck. “And we move together real slow to the beat.”

            “I’d hardly call that dancing.”

            “And I’d hardly call this a conversation, mister, so let’s get with the sway-sway.”

**Stein**

Whatever Marie wants, I will provide. She tugged me onto the dance floor, planted my hands on her, and started moving to the beat. When did I get to be so pliant? The only flexible part of me was my soul, able to bend to my curiosity’s whims about any weapon I came across.

            I’m curious about Marie. Not just from a weapon standpoint, although the legendary Mjolnir and its history of choosing meisters for their judged worthiness is enough cause for fascination. I’m curious about Marie as a person like I’ve never felt before. Aside from the hormone-fueled dreams I’ve had about her, I’d like to know for reasons other than how she’d be useful in a battle context. She cannot be reduced to a girl who punches first and asks questions second, or a girl who uses physical affection to break up a fight, or a girl who visits people at midnight for a conversation on a hotel balcony. She is all of these things, and my mind is ticking, itching, craving to find out more.

            _And I’d give up forever to touch you_

_‘Cause I know that you feel me somehow_

_You’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be_

_And I don’t wanna go home right now._

I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be the gentlemanly boy she deserves to be dancing with, other than _not_ to follow Spirit’s example and keep my hands chastely at her waist. I don’t know if touching my forehead to hers is acceptable, or if I should try to twirl her.

            “Your eyepatch coordinates with your dress. Aesthetically pleasing,” I say, opting for whispered conversation. Whereas others might try to mask their injury with a prosthetic, Marie chose something still like a mask, but also rather fashionable, if I do say so myself.

            She takes a break from humming along to the lyrics to respond. “Your suit matches your hair. It makes you look distinguished. And handsome.”

            “I should record you saying that compliment so I can replay it the next time my mother insists jeans aren’t appropriate for Temple.”

            Marie laughs and presses closer. Her soul is a siren’s call to mine, throwing off sparks in her chest that she can’t see for herself. What a shame—her soul is downright electric. Gorgeous. In the hands of a capable meister, she would truly live up to her moniker as the Hammer of God.

            _And I don’t want the world to see me_

_‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand_

_When everything’s made to be broken_

_I just want you to know who I am_

I hear a faint crackling and look down at the source. Electric current, alive as anything, is writhing its way up and down Marie’s arms to my neck and back down my arms to her waist, encircling us. It takes me a moment to realize that we must be in resonance, but not just the low-level kind that weapons and meisters often fall into during casual times. This is battle-ready resonance, defiant and glowing. This is the kind of resonance E.A.T. students dream of achieving by graduation to show off to their classmates. And I’m having it here in the middle of a dance floor with a young woman I’ve only just scratched the surface of knowing.

            “Marie,” I whisper. At some point in the second verse she nestled her head against my shoulder, and I feel a pang of guilt for rousing her. “Look around you.”

            She lifts her head and opens her eye, blinking at the glow around us. “Oh, Stein,” she breathes, “are you doing this?”

            “I’m not trying to. It just happened…”

            “…naturally,” Marie finishes, her face breaking into a huge smile. She leans up to kiss the bridge of my nose, right where the bump of cartilage is as a permanent reminder of how she broke it.

            Yes, naturally. As natural as air particles reflecting blue light or blue whales being the largest mammals on earth or blue being the color of the eyepatch Marie is wear as she moves down from my nose to my lips, sighing my name.

            Our kiss is high-voltage if I do say so myself. The electricity picks up around us, surging through the closed circuit of our bodies. Her tongue is working over my lips, and apparently everyone else’s tongue in the room is working, too, because the strange couple on the dance floor making out to an alternate rock song apparently is good gossip fodder. I break away long enough from the kiss to see Kami staring at the two of us, jaw dropped, and Spirit strangely looking like he wants to break out some pom-poms and a megaphone to cheer us on.

            I smirk and turn back to Marie, whose eye is shining bright like the moon. Eat your heart out, Kami Yamamoto. See who Mjolnir has judged to be worthy now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics excerpted from "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls. Copyright 1997 Warner Bros. Records. But since I'm using the lyrics in a free fanfic, no one should give a rat's furry behind because I'm not making a profit.
> 
> I've avoided specifically dating this fic with any music or cultural references, instead opting for more of a floating, indefinite timeline. However, with the use of "Iris" in this chapter, that puts this fic as taking place in the late 90s. You could, of course, be like me and not care much about the release date of one alternate rock song dating this fic, and instead choose to just enjoy its presence here.


	11. Discovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stein's atrocities finally come to light.

**Kami**

I’m not going to suggest that I started regularly dating Spirit out of petty spite. Marie can have her freak with the stitches. _Watashi wa mō kinishinai._ But I would be dishonest if I said spite wasn’t part of my motivation at first. If Stein wanted to mess with the resonance between me and Marie, then I was going to mess with whatever connection he had with Spirit. Which, if you ask Spirit, wasn’t much of a connection to begin with.

            It turns out that when Spirit isn’t trying to chase the skirt of every vaguely pretty girl in the Academy, he can be a very thoughtful, sensitive date. And so generous, too: he bought me a charm bracelet for Valentine’s Day and a fistful of charms to add to it for my birthday six weeks later, along with a book on more advanced soul theory. I had to tell him to go easy on the flowers after the first couple weeks, because I ran out of books to press the petals in and because he was running up quite a large tab at Death Blooms. The dinners at the little restaurants in Death City are wonderful, as is spending time together walking around the school grounds and just talking. We ended up swapping scarves when it got fairly cold after the Snowball dance, and he insisted on wearing my matching bright pink hat although it clashed horribly with his hair.

            I’m not trying to look for trouble, is what I’m trying to say. I still pay attention in class and took notes while Spirit deluged me with love notes, and I still do well on papers and quizzes. Academics come first and foremost, even if that means having to sit with Spirit’s head in my lap while I study from my books, stroking his hair every once in a while and making him purr like a cat.

            But of course, because the universe hates those who play too much by the rules, disaster strikes. Spirit and I were taking a study break on the couch—okay, maybe it wasn’t a study break if the book ended up on the floor, along with my blouse and Spirit’s tie. One of his hands was getting dangerously close to going under my skirt while I unbuttoned Spirit’s shirt for equality’s sake. It was when I ran a fingernail down his stomach in an effort to be sexy and it made him wince hard that th red flag went up.

            “Spirit?” I go to peel back the sides of his shirt and gasp at the scars, plural, that I see. He mentioned back in Paris that he had one that sometimes hurt, but he never, ever alluded to something like this. 

            “Kami—God—it’s nothing, all right?” He tries to tug his shirt back over him, but my hands lock onto his wrists, freezing him in place.

            “Some of these look new. Fresh. This one,” I tap as lightly as possible to one right over his heart, “looks old, but this one in the middle? I can still see little pockmarks from the stitches.”

            “They’re from _missions_ —”

            “ _Nā!_ _Fukanō!_ You haven’t been on a mission in a month, and this looks like a week-old scar!”

            “Kami, will you let it go? C’mon, please…” he leans up to kiss me on the face, “you-you don’t have to look at them. Just lay on top of me and your body will—”

            “ _Stein_.” I hiss.

            “I’m sorry, what? Are you suggesting we get a three-way going here, because I don’t think Marie—”

            “ _Damare!_ ” I push a finger onto his lips. Spirit, because he’s still a child despite being a year older than me, licks at my skin in an effort to distract me. “Spirit, do you think Stein has been cutting you open?”

            “What?!” he yelps. “How could you even suggest such a thing? Besides, I’d know if I’d be getting cut open, right?”

            “Are you asking me or are you telling me?” I say, settling back on my knees and crossing my arms. “The freak thinks he’s some mad scientist. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s been injecting you with some serum to keep you asleep while he hacks you apart on his examination table.”

            “Now _you’re_ the one that sounds like you’re mad,” Spirit replies, sitting up more fully so I’m straddling his lap. He reaches around my back and tugs at the end of my braid, a favorite thing of his to do. “Don’t worry about them, Kami. I don’t. Can’t we just go back to what we were doing?”

            We do go back to what we were doing (plus a little more), but I still worry. I worry that Spirit has been an unwitting victim for years, brushing off how truly dangerous his meister is. I worry that one day the scalpel will slip, and it might not entirely be an accident, and Spirit’s obituary is in the newspaper, cause of death cited as a severed jugular vein. So I hatch a plan. Not a perfect plan by any means, because it involves me hiding under Spirit’s bed with the dust bunnies and God knows what else lives under there, in the dungeon that is known as Patchwork Labs, and waiting for something to prove my hunch. Of course, this gets Spirit way more excited than necessary.

            “Should I buy condoms?” he asks me after class the night the plan was to take place waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

            “I’m not going to be sleeping overnight _in_ your bed,” I remind him for the umpteenth time. “I’ll be underneath it.”

            “Right, but eventually you need to come up to warm up your cold body, and I’ll spoon you from behind and sing you sweet love songs…”

            I let him carry on with his little fantasy, shaking my head and smiling. If all turns out to be a false alarm, then sure, I’ll indulge him. But if my suspicions are founded, well…I can’t promise what will happen then.

            It is a long night of playing not-quite-strip poker and flicking through pirated cable in Spirit’s room (Stein is apparently a master at working around the Academy’s cable package), but eventually the digital alarm clock ticks over to 11:30, and Spirit crawls into bed wearing nothing but an old pair of pajama bottoms. I roll underneath his bed, which is surprisingly devoid of dust bunnies but is very full of manga and comic books, and wait. And wait. And wait.

            My eyelids are drooping by the time I hear the squeak of gurney wheels. I snap to attention, watching as a pair of unmistakable clunky, stitched-up shoes plod into the room along with the wheels and come to rest alongside Spirit’s bed.

            “What a good specimen,” Stein chuckles in a low, creepy voice. “You’ve gone and prepped yourself for surgery. Perhaps I’ll take it easy on you toni—”

            “ _KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!_ ” I scream, latching onto Stein’s ankles and letting him drag me out from under the bed in his shock. The bedsheets rips under Stein’s viselike grip, and Spirit bolts upright in bed, also screaming. I jump just high enough to tackle Stein and knee him in the groin to take him down.

            “WHAT—THE _FUCK_ —”

            “YEAH, I SHOULD BE ASKING YOU THE SAME QUESTION, FREAKY STEIN!” I yell back at him. “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, HACKING UP SPIRIT LIKE THIS?”

            “He—my experiment—”

            “YOU DON’T FUCKING EXPERIMENT ON PEOPLE WITHOUT THEM KNOWING, ASSHOLE!” I start beating my fists into his face, unheeding of how badly my knuckles hurt from poor form. Only the barest flash of silver and Spirit yelping alerts me to the fact that Stein had drawn his scalpel and was about to draw it vertically right up my wrist—

            “BASTARD!” I cry, clasping both fists together and slamming right down into the middle of his face. I hear the sickening crunch of cartilage under the hit, and his scalpel spirals out of his hands and clatters to the wooden floor.

            I turn to Spirit, who’s still sitting up in bed. His thin chest is heaving with his every breath, his skin clammy in the shafts of moonlight coming in through the window.

            “Get to Lord Death,” he breathes, shaking. “I’ll be fine, just get—”

            I don’t need to be told twice to run. I scoop up the scalpel in one hand, the blade cutting into my palm at first before I think to spin it around. Adrenaline is pumping through my body so fast that I barely process taking the Academy steps three at a time and pounding on the Death Room door.

            “Shinigami-sama! _Shinigami-sama!_ ”

            The door creaks open, and Lord Death’s goofy pointed mask looks down on me. “Oh, it’s you, Kami! To what do I owe this late pleasure?”

            “It’s not pleasure that brings me here, Shinigami-sama,” I huff, charging my way into the room and under the seemingly mile-long archway of guillotines. “Franken Stein has been experimenting on his weapon partner, Spirit Albarn. And I have the proof.”

            I whip out the scalpel, which has Stein’s name monogrammed on the handle, a detail that I hadn’t counted on before tonight but am grateful that exists now. Lord Death leans over to peer at the scalpel, plucking it up with his giant hand and holding it up.

            “Well, this certainly has Stein’s name on it, but how do I know he simply didn’t drop it in the hallway?” he says after a long pause.

            “Shinigami-sama, with all due respect, Stein wouldn’t drop an important tool like that on the floor without hearing it fall and picking it up. If you submitted this to the nearby forensics lab—”

            “We have our own in-house forensics unit for the Academy, Kami.”

            I blink. “If you sent it there, you’d see Spirit’s DNA on the blade from where he was cut—”

            “And judging by the drying blood on your palm, I suspect they might find your DNA on the blade, too.”

            Oh, crap, I hadn’t even thought of that. “The only other piece of evidence I have to offer, Shinigami, is Spirit himself. And he’s not with me right now because…well, he didn’t know any of this was going on. He’s still in denial about the scars being from Stein’s experiments and not simply from mission wounds. If you summoned him here, I’m sure he’d tell you.”

            Lord Death tilts his head and looks at me for a bit before circling back to the tea table he has set up in the middle of the room. “Would you like to join me for tea?”

            “Excuse me?”

            “Tea!” He holds up the teapot in one oversized hand. “I’d just finished brewing some over the brazier when you came knocking! Incidentally, it’s chamomile. Just the thing for calming frayed nerves.”

            I tug at the end of my braid, running my fingers through my hair. To say no to tea in Japan is considered an insult—do I go directly to hell if I refuse tea with a death god? The last thing I think I want to do right now is handle a tiny, fragile cup of hot liquid that could easily spill over, much like my emotions are threatening to do now.

            But I must say yes, because Lord Death is a god. My god. “It would be an honor,” I say, bowing slightly before I cross my legs to sit on the cushion opposite him.

            “Oh! Before we get started…” Lord Death turns toward the tall mirror behind him and taps three times on the swirling glass. “Satine? Satine, are you there?”

            The glass ripples, and Professor Morningstar appears in the mirror, wearing lacy pajamas and looking completely rousted from sleep. “Lord Death? What is it you need?”

            “We have a bit of a situation going on with a couple of our students. Are you familiar with the abandoned laboratory building on the outskirts of downtown?”

            “The one with the stitches painted all over it?”

            “Yes. A pair of your students, Spirit Albarn and…what is that Stein boy’s first name?” Lord Death turns to me, an eyebrow quirked. Both Professor Morningstar and I shrug.

            “Anyway. Stein is to be detained for questioning by me in the morning, and Spirit is to be brought here to the Academy for medical examination in the infirmary. Assemble your best team for these tasks—I am leaving it up to your discretion. But you must act swiftly, Satine. It’s uncertain whether Stein will be attempting to evade Academy authorities.”

            “He probably won’t,” I pipe up.

            Both Lord Death and Professor Morningstar tilt their heads at me.

            “Hehe…I might have tried to bash his face in until he was unconscious, or at the very least unable to move,” I say, tugging at my shirt collar. Did it get hot in here or is it just me?

            Professor Morningstar looks like she’s about to say something disapproving, but Lord Death waves her off. “Satine, you must act now! That’s an order!”

            He turns away from the mirror and back to me. “I am curious about one thing, though.”

            “Yes, Shinigami-sama?”

            “How did you ever discover the scars on Spirit’s body in the first place? I was under the impression that the two of you weren’t all that close.”

            Oh, it’s definitely gotten hotter in the Death Room. Perhaps I’m slowly being lowered to hell as I sit here on this cushion. “Um…we’ve been dating for a couple months now. And if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not go into any further detail.”

            “No, no, that’s quite all right. I don’t think I’ll need any more than that.” If it’s possible to look flustered while wearing a mask, Lord Death does in this moment. “It simply complicates my plan to go forward from here, however.”

            “Your plan?”

            “Yes. I will of course have to speak to everyone involved when everyone’s had a good night’s rest, but I think the best plan of action will be to have you and Stein switch partners.”

            “Switch partners?!” I stand up so fast I nearly send my teacup flying. “Shinigami-sama, you can’t be serious. You’re not even going to punish Stein for what he’s done?”

            “Oh, he will be punished—”

            “By handing Marie over to him on a silver platter?! Why? So he has someone new to hack to pieces?”

            “Kami—”

            “I came to this Academy _because_ of Marie. She’s _my_ partner, damn it!” I stomp my foot, tears welling in my eyes. “It feels like I’m the one getting punished here, Shinigami, not Stein! He cut Spirit up for who knows how long—”

            “Kami, be _quiet!_ ” Lord Death growls out the last word, so unexpectedly harsh I rock back on my heels slightly. He clears his throat before speaking again. “You are not headmaster of this Academy, I am. And as such, I determine who receives punishment and in what form. You don’t know my rationale for asking you to switch partners, yet you protest before I can explain myself. You’re calling for Stein to practically be burned at the stake, and although I have no reason not to believe you, I also have no reason to believe you, either.”

            “But—”

            “No buts. Everything will be explained in the morning. Now, until Stein and Spirit are accounted for and within these Academy walls, you are not to leave this room. You may have as much tea as you like. You can take a nap, doodle on the walls. I have crayons in the supply closet, and coloring books, too. But do not leave the Death Room until you are given permission. Understood?”

            “ _Hai._ ”

            How fitting that I spend the next few hours surrounded by crosses stuck in the ground like grave markers. I try not to look at them too much; they remind me of the black tie Spirit got from his dad as a birthday gift, and I feel like crying again. I drink my way through at least three pots of tea before Lord Death returns and says I can go see Spirit in the infirmary.

            They have him hooked up to an IV when I arrive, though I have no idea why. The nurse offers me no explanations, just a simple nod of acknowledgment and a chair to sit in next to his bed. Spirit is staring up at the ceiling: counting the cracks in the paint, according to him. I ignore the chair and crawl into the hospital bed with him, sniffling.

            “Hey. Hey, what’s wrong?” He smooths his hand along the top of my head, his other arm wrapped around my back. “Don’t cry. You got to Lord Death, right? I’m okay.”

            “No. No, you’re not okay,” I insist, giving him probably the snottiest, grossest kisses he’ll ever have in his life. “You’ll be okay once you’re away from Stein. And I swear to you, Spirit Albarn. I swear it. He will never lay a hand on you again.”


	12. Decisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which partners are switched, and the future looks bright at least for one pair.

**Marie**

            I’m the only one of the four of us in the Death Room that got a decent night’s sleep last night. Kami didn’t come home, which was not unusual given how far we’d fallen apart over the past few months, so I fell asleep early reading one of my novels. Lord Death scared the shit out of me when he called on my mirror, asking me to come to the Death Room immediately and to only bring myself.

            I shift uncomfortably on my beanbag, my knees up around my chin. I think this was Lord Death’s new way of trying to be hip and cool with the kids, but all it was doing was making everyone more irritable. Anyway, I say I’m the only one that slept well because the bags under Kami’s eyes are huge and puffy, Spirit looks like he’s seen about twenty ghosts one right after the other, and, well, I’m not sure Lord Death really _sleeps_. Do death gods need to sleep? No one has ever told us.

            “Now, I know we haven’t been brought here under the most favorable of circumstances, but I do expect a certain level of civility to be maintained while we’re all here. Is that understood?” Lord Death says.

            “Yes,” everyone replies.

            “Good. Let’s get down to business, then. From here on out, Marie, you will be partnered with Stein—”

            “Where is Stein, by the way?” I ask.

            “Locked up in a cell where he belongs,” Kami answers, eyes narrowed.

            “Did I ask you?!”

            “What did I say about civility?” Lord Death speaks over us. I huff and settle further down into my beanbag. “Marie, I paired you with Stein specifically because of your healing wavelength.”

            “Marie has a healing wavelength?” Kami furrows her brow. “How does she heal?”

            “I heal people emotionally,” I reply, “but since you never showed any emotion other than complete and utter bitchiness—”

            “That is _enough_!” Lord Death’s voice rings out high and clear. “Marie’s healing wavelength is, I think, a perfect way to counteract Stein’s sensitivity to Madness. And before any of you ask, yes, we were aware this was a problem before he entered the Academy. Plenty of successful meisters and weapons have graduated from DWMA with heightened sensitivity to Madness, and I believe Stein is no different. However, he is the first to act on his Madness influences with such fervor.”

            “Where would Stein have been exposed to so much Madness?” Kami asks, polite for once.

            “Our missions,” Spirit replies hollowly. “He always wanted to go after the biggest, nastiest targets possible. The ones closest to becoming a kishin. Said they tested his limits in the best way.”

            “Precisely. In this case, I think his ambition proved to be something of a detriment. With Marie as his weapon, however, the two of them will be able to continue pursuing the targets Stein feels is most appropriate. With Marie’s consent, of course,” Lord Death adds, nodding at me.

            “Meanwhile, Kami actually has an Anti-Madness wavelength that, once activated through Soul Resonance, can be pushed through the weapons she wields as well. This will protect both Spirit and Kami on their missions as well. Also, Kami,” Lord Death cocks his head at her, “I think you’ll find wielding Spirit to be a tad easier on you. He’s a mid-range weapon as a scythe, which doesn’t require that you get so up close to your targets.”

            “Understood,” Kami nods.

            “Well, then. If everyone is in agreement on this arrangement, I think all that’s left to do is have the weapons swap places. Head on home, pack up your belongings. Get friends to help you if you like! This is the start of something fresh, a new beginning.”

            “Oh, there _is_ one last thing,” Lord Death holds up a finger. “Stein is bound by the same oath you are, but you are sworn to secrecy on this entire series of events. No writing home to your parents to tell them what happened; they’ll simply receive notification that a partner reassignment was in order. No talking about the specifics with friends who aren’t in the loop. Only you four and myself, along with select members of DWMA intelligence, know what is going on. Do not try to speak about this elsewhere.”

            “That being said, skedaddle!”

***

             I drag my rolling suitcase along behind me, the wheels catching on some of the gravel. I didn’t manage to pack everything that I owned up to take with me tonight; the rest is at Zu’s place until I can get back to it. The only thing I have with me are the essentials: some changes of clothing, toiletries, basic makeup, my school stuff, and Patchwork the bear, tucked into the top of my backpack.

            The sun is just setting behind the horizon, streaking the sky orange and pink. There aren’t as many streetlamps on the outskirts of Death City, only one set up every hundred feet or so. By all accounts, and all past experiences, I should have gotten lost by now, but I’m not. My feet know exactly which way to go, because my soul is guiding me home.

            Stein and I have such a natural resonance that it’s like breathing. The professors have never seen anything like it before from students who weren’t at least two-star meisters, and I think that makes him proud. He’s kind of shut down this past week after all the shit that’s happened. I don’t blame him, not really, even though he’s at the root of all the chaos. Maybe I should feel guiltier at feeling so lighthearted, but I can’t bring myself to do it. When Stein picks me up in weapon form, he says I’m light as a feather. I could cry—no one has ever said I’m light when I’m a hammer before. Every one of my former meisters struggled, but Stein just _gets_ me.

            I must be getting closer. I can feel the electricity of his soul prickling at my skin like summer rain, beckoning me onward. He’s the only compass I need.

            Oh Death, he’s sitting on the steps of Patchwork Labs, facing the street. When he sees the oblong shadow that is surely me shuffling along, he rises to greet me. I want so badly to live out the romance novel cliché of dropping my bags and running into his arms, but I don’t. Instead, I march right up to the door with everything, unable to wipe the grin off my face. I don’t think he can, either.

            “ _Wilkommen zuhause_ ,” he says, spreading his arms wide in what I’m sure he means to be a mocking gesture before coming down the steps and pulling me in close for a kiss.

            You’re right, Stein. I am home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there you have it, folks. 
> 
> Here is the link to the art my artist created for this fic: http://guacamoletrash.tumblr.com/post/156554906644/here-is-a-lil-digital-illustration-i-did-to-go  
> Gaby, you are an absolute saint for this. Thank you so, so much. 
> 
> And thank you all for reading.


End file.
